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BritishCultureDandyismI. Introduction

1. Introduction video: Les Sapeurs

https://youtu.be/v2O5yfw20Yg

(https://youtu.be/MQWC30cEUeQ),(https://youtu.be/8rnV791AAWw)

• Sapologie if the life philosophy of these so-called sapeurs. What is this life philosophy? What is the idea behind it?

• Why did it emerge in Kinshasa?

• What does the dress style look like?

• How do they know how to dress well? Who are their role models?

• Which kind of personality does the Sapeur have?

• Which moral can we take from Les Sapeurs?

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2. What is a dandy?

a) All the people underneath are dandies.

Could you list a few characteristics?

b) Name the items of clothes that you can see on these dandies. Put numbers on the pictures.

1) a top hat 2) a waistcoat 3) a pocket watch 4) fancy glasses 5) a beard 6) a bowler hat 7) patterns and prints 8) a vest 9) a bow tie 10) a white shirt 11) a fur stola 12) a tie-pin

13) a purse 14) a walking cane 15) gloves 16) tweed 17) a broche 18) a pochet 19) a tie 20) a long coat 21) a scarf 22) a moustache 23) a suit 24) cufflinks

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II. Reading: Dandyism today

THE NEW BRITISH DANDY?

1. Part One

With events like umbrella jousting, London’s Chap Olympiad celebrates an offbeat, oh-so-British subculture. But what is the meaning of 'chap' today – and why are there so many of them? By Tara Isabella Burton, 21 July 2015

“Ladies and gentlemen,” cries the master of ceremonies, “where else can you find a man on a bicycle pouring tea, wearing a suit of armour?”

We are in Bedford Square, London. The bicycle mentioned is for 'Tea Pursuit', a competition in which contestants pour from a teapot into a cup – all while pedalling across a makeshift1 field of artificial grass. The current contender is 'Sir Artemis Scarheart', whose lower half is covered in a stainless steel plate.

It’s just a typical scene from the Chap Olympiad, a surreal, Pimm’s-soaked field day devoted to the sport – and art – of being a perfect English gentleman. Contestants sporting boaters2 and blazers, plus-fours3 and cricket sweaters, linen and tweed participate in games like the Wodehousian 'Aunt Avoidance' (according to the rules, “competitors must make it from one end of the track to the other, avoiding absurd requests from aunts while keeping a lit pipe and with a chap-like saunter4”). Other challenges include 'Not Playing Tennis' (players keep a ball aloft5 while reading a newspaper), 'Well-Dressage' (essentially: posing artfully on a hobbyhorse6) and the 'Champagne Charlie Pyramid of Dextrous Dandies' (a human pyramid, with champagne-pouring). For the winner, there is the 'golden cravat' – the award for the most gentlemanly chap of all.

The Chap Olympiad wasn't always the phenomenon it is now. When it began 11 years ago, it was just an ad hoc gathering of like-minded friends in Regent’s Park, all of whom were involved with satirical 'anarcho-dandyist' magazine The Chap, founded in 1999 by Gustav Temple and Viv Darkwood.

They didn't decide to become chaps, says Michael 'Atters' Attree, a humourist and Chap editor who has been present at the Olympiad from the beginning. “That's just who we were!”

One of the Chap Olympiad's quirky competitions (Credit: Stephen Dowling)

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Text Questions:

1. What is a chap?

2. How would you call or define the games they compete in?

3. Name three of these competitions.

4. What is the golden cravat?

5. The Chap Olympiad has existed since the beginning of the 20th Century: is this statement right or wrong? How is it said in the text?

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2. Part Two

Glory days

Identified with well-groomed gentlemen who draw from the social and sartorial7 codes of a bygone8 era, chap culture has seen a recent resurgence – one that has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of subcultures like steampunk9. The Chap Olympiad has grown too. Today, it is a sold-out event that garners10 coverage in outlets like The Times, The Telegraph and Time Out. It attracts everyone from lifelong vintage aficionados to what Attree calls “fair-weather11 chaps” – curious Londoners looking to let loose or raucous hen parties.

“The Americans have cowboys. The British have gentlemen”

Then there’s a third category, according to Attree: reactionary nostalgists who take the longing for England's glory days of Empire – not to mention themselves – a bit too seriously.

Nothing could be more English, after all, than the figure of the chap. “Americans have cowboys,” says photographer Rose Callahan, whose 2011 book I Am Dandy profiled chaps and dandies worldwide. “The British have gentlemen.”

Clayton Hartley, Secretary-Treasurer of the New Sheridan Club, a social club of chaps and enthusiasts that first took shape12 on The Chap's online message boards, says being a chap is about more than what you wear. It’s a state of mind, “a fondness for, I suspect, the security of the past," he says. "You know, the days when men would doff13 their hats to each other and smoke their pipes.”

“We're cherry-picking from a different time”

Of course, Hartley admits, such security is itself a fantasy – after all, from the Great Depression through World War Two, the 1930s and '40s his club's members often emulate were hardly Britain's most untroubled eras. And the idyllic leisure associated with the figure of the chap was unavailable to all but a very privileged few.

Competitors at the Chap Olympiad await their turn (Credit: Stephen Dowling)

But that, Hartley says, is what makes the fantasy of being a chap so rewarding. “We're cherry-picking from a different time,” Hartley says, adopting “the lifestyles of the wealthy” – even just for an evening or an afternoon.

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Text questions:

1. How does Clayton Heartley describe being a chap?

2. Right or wrong: chaps recreate the era of a happy, airy and thoughtless Britain during which there was social equality.

Explain using words from the text. 3. In your own words. Describe what steampunk actually is:

Steampunk refers to a subgenre of science fiction and sometimes fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.[1][2] Although its literary origins are sometimes associated with the cyberpunk genre, steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-apocalyptic future during which steam power has maintained mainstream usage, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk may, therefore, be described as neo-Victorian. Steampunk perhaps most recognisably features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them, and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. Such technology may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or the modern authors Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld, Stephen Hunt and China Miéville. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history-style presentations of such technology as lighter-than-air airships, analogue computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

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4. Part Three

Maid in England

The New Sheridan Club's Defence Secretary – official job description: “organises events and puts the wind up14 our enemies” – Sam Hutchinson (aka Sir Artemis Scarheart) agrees. In fact, had he lived in any of the eras he recreates, he'd hardly have had the opportunity to be a chap at all: his grandmother was in what he calls “domestic service”. But adopting the clothing and manner from a vanished era’s privileged set offers its own scope for rebellion – a democratisation of an identity once available only to a few.

To buy a set of tails, for example, appropriates15 a symbol that his family couldn’t access before, he says. It’s both “a statement that I am further along than16 my ancestors” and recognition of the fact that such a linear view of class no longer needs apply17. One doesn’t have to wait to be invited to an Ambassadorial Ball to wear white tie18, after all; tickets to Hartley’s own Candlelight Club events start at £25 ($39).

'Chapettes' mug for the camera (Credit: S.Dowling) A quiet moment at the Chap Olympiad (Credit: S. Dowling)

Plus, Hutchinson says, the rules of chappishness – from when to doff a cap to a lady to the etiquette of pipe smoking – offer a framework for behaviour that modern society lacks. “How do you greet somebody? How do you sign off an email?,” he asks. Chap culture gives a sense of “Oh, this is how you do this,” he says. “We actually like sets of rules and established forms of dress.”

At the same time, Hartley notes, there's something inherently rebellious about adopting the behaviour of a chap in this day and age – about choosing rules in an era without limitations. Back when he was a journalist, Hartley says, he often was invited to black tie19 dinners. “There were always guys who would try to subvert it, or they'd wear black tie but wear it around their head, you know, Oh, you can't tell me what to do.'” Rarer, but in his 14verontrusten,bangmaken15zicheigenmaken16tobefurtheralongthan=hetverdergeschopthebbendan17toneedapply=nodigzijn18whitetie=zeerformeel,blacktie=minderformeel19Seefootnote18.

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opinion far more subversive, are those who “relish the opportunity to embrace the dress code and maybe dial it up to eleven20.” That includes chaps. “We actually like sets of rules and established ways and forms of dress. I think partly because no-one does it anymore – it is rebellious,” he says.

In fact, both The Chap magazine and the chap phenomenon rose from punk subculture. “There's quite a lot of overlap between heavy goths and steampunks and dandies,” Hartley says. “It's anti-fashion.”

If that all sounds a bit earnest, Hartley admits that the line between seriousness and self-deprecation is a fine one. Hartley recalls once having dinner with a young viscount21 who wondered aloud about the purpose of The Chap magazine. “He said, 'I've never really understood if it's for people like me or taking the piss out of people like me.’'' Hartley laughs. “Well, actually, it's both!”

Text Questions

1. Why do chaps see themselves as anarchists, something you’d rather associate with punks, separatists and anti-establishment groups?

2. The members of the New Sheridan Club are rich people. Is this statement correct? Explain with quotes from the text.

3. Is the following statement right or wrong: chappishness tells you how to behave in modern society as well. Explain.

4. Is chappishness is a form of non-conformism?

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5. Part Four

A spiffing sport

After all, what could be more English than taking a time-honoured22 cultural icon and turning it into a giant joke? Holding court at the Olympiad ringside23 in a red velvet frock coat24 with gold brocade25, Attree introduces me to his beloved pet bat brooch26 (he’s named it Batty: a counterpart to his pet riding whip, Whippy) before informing me that being a chap requires not taking anything – including being a chap – too seriously. Nostalgia, the longstanding English tradition of “taking the piss”, a longing for a better, bygone England, a healthy dollop27 of irony – all this, Attree says, make up the essence of chappishness. What matters, Attree insists, is that you make it your own. “You can even wear trainers,” he says. “As long as you're really interesting.”

It is this gleeful spirit of tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness that gives the Chap Olympiad its madcap28 energy. During a game of bicycle umbrella jousting, Sir Artemis Scarheart discovers to his chagrin that plate armour, however smart, is not conducive29 to pedalling. Reduced to standing forlornly30 while his opponent rides in literal circles around him (as the master of ceremonies notes with glee31), Scarheart throws himself upon the point of his umbrella. He receives points for honourable behaviour and wins the match.

At last, late in the afternoon, the Olympiad comes to an end. Scarheart comes in second, winning a silver cravat for his trouble; Attree attempts to flirt with the fiancée of the winner of the Moustache Competition.

Even chaps need a rest sometimes (Credit: Stephen Dowling)

And the Chap's de facto anthem32 – 'gentleman rhymer' Mr B's All Hail the Chap – begins to play:

It's a call to charms, a design for living/within a world so unforgiving Where sloth33 and banality are the standard brew34/well, we've

upped our standards – so up yours too!

Give your pipe a tap, park your rattle trap35, raise your hat or cap As we say, all hail The Chap!

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It’s utterly impossible to listen with a straight face. But that may be the most English part of all.

This story is a part of BBC Britain – a new series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. Readers outside of the UK can see every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you also can see our latest stories by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150721-the-new-british-dandy

Text questions:

1. How seriously is chappishness to be taken?

2. Is dandyism a characteristic of Britishness of Englishness in your opinion? Explain.?

3. After reading this text, in how far did your concept of a dandy match?

Now answer these general questions about this text:

Text type?

poem, newspaper article, magazine

article, opinion piece, blog, diary,

reader’s comment, …?

Text purpose?

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Text theme?

Type of author?

reviewer, newspaper journalist,

blogger, writer for a magazine, …?

Type of reader?

Certain age group? Certain

education level? Certain nationality?

Specific group? Specific sex? …

objective/ subjective

How can you tell from the language

use?

informative/ diverting/ persuasive /

instructive

III. Watching: Dandyism in London

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA3BlICbi6s

Watch the footage check what the interviewees say.

a) How many men were interviewed? …………………………………

b) How would they describe their style?

c) What are they wearing today?

d) What are the key pieces in their wardrobes?

e) What item would they like to own?

f) Where do they like to shop?

g) How often do they visit a barber?

h) Do they use any products?

i) Do they buy men’s magazines?

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j) Where do they get inspiration for what they wear?

k) Do they create, follow or ignore fashion?

l) Are men, in their opinion, more interested in fashion now?

m) Were all these interviewees typical dandies? Were there things that occurred to or surprised you?

Explain?

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Extra: THE TWEED RUN

The Tweed Run, a short report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6rPnNWHcgo

Tweed Run 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyVYKFpZ1uU

IV. Writing: Oscar Wilde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfoXcfy2aQU

1. Watch the footage, write down what is written or said about him.

Key words & phrases:

2. Then, based on this information, write his biography of about 100-125 words.