At Dandyism, a post on "The Rise of the Retro-Eccentrics"
It's inspired by a new play called Maples and Vine that opened in San Francisco in April, whose protagonists have " become allergic to
their fast-paced modern lives". After meeting "a charismatic man" who belongs to "the Society of
Dynamic Obsolescence" they join a "community of 1950’s re-enactors" who live in a "compulsively recreated world" that is "permanently ensconced in the year
1955 – the era of Eisenhower, cars with fins, A-line skirts, mayonnaise
slathered casseroles and Lucky Strike cigarettes". The period details are enforced by an Authenticity Committee.
Along the way the Dandyism post mentions such parallels as the Society for Creative
Anachronism, the early 20th Century lifestyle living artists McDermott and McGough (as mentioned earlier in this blog), Johnny Stokes ("a San Francisco-born
gentleman famous for tooling around the city in his vintage 1937 Buick in full
Dashiell Hammett fig"), the Art Deco Society, and the U.K.'s own Chaps (also mentioned on this blog a while back in the same post as McDermott and McGough) and who are led by one Gustav Temple. Dandyism notes how some have turned "retro-inspired lifestyles into
successful businesses".
Is dandyism itself a form of -- if not retro or revivalism -- then anti-chronistic dissidence from the present, from a world that has lost touch with elegance and refinement?
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