'Dandy' is a term I associate only with schlock: that gruesome Beckham look, or a worse media/marketing invention than 'prep'.  I once read in some crappy styling book that if someone calls you a 'Dandy' it's time to empty your wardrobe and begin all over again.  I tended - and tend - to think of Tom Wolfe (who reminds me of Truman Capote) and would rather not have to think of him at all.  My style, in fact, is avowedly 'anti-Dandy': the plain colours, the lack of show: something Patrick Nahman taught me.  My interpretation of it: dress down, dress expensively (whenever practically possible), allow nothing to give an impression of 'look at me'.  Anti-mod, in fact, in almost all senses, having pushed it to another level.  Yet more paradox?

This. of course, is the sort of stuff that sent Dear Old Chens into a right old tizz isn't it? And didn't Jimbo just swallow the whole Kevin Rowland/Jason Jules nonsense with embarrassing relish? Desperate to belong. Poor chap, and he was so clever and should have been able to channel it all into something stable and positive. Getting older definitely takes the edge off of one's theorising. I think it's healthy to pontificate about clothes, to speculate, and find new themes and ideas, but the notion of an elite, a special group who know more, well I laugh at all that now. I had it as a legacy of over-immersion  in 'mod-think' in  my youth. But have you seen the state of the old mods now?! Quelle horreur ! Navy cashmere and penny loafers though - yum! that's enough to fill my brain my pleasure.

Wow, Ripper really did talk some crap...