In We are Dandy, Dita Von Teese concludes her opening text with a quote from Loux, the Vintage Guru of Nambia and one of the many well-dressed gents in this volume: “You can sleep in a sack, you can sleep under a bridge –– but you can still look smart.” and finishes with: “Words to live by! Now go out and live.”
The well written Introduction by Nathaniel “Natty” Adams explains the research of three years since the publication of I am Dandy and dandyism could spread and mutated and finally has documented the phenomenon. “This book”, he says, “is closer than the first book to the project as we originally envisioned it: a global survey of men’s style and elegance.” Explaining the choice of portrayed persons, their two trips outside of Europe and North America to Tokyo and Johannesburg and how Instagram played as much of a key role as recommendations and happenstance in finding people who met their standards for dandyism. The described classification on the different dandies is helpful. The conclusion on aesthetic individualism like that of the late Ziggy, the Purple One, the Greatest and Bill that dandyism itself is far from dead as this book should ably demonstrate as long as people dare to be a personality.
In the following pages, these great personalities, each with their own outfits, are shown with good photos in their natural habitat, telling their personal stories on looking for aestethics and their way to live.
I cordially recommend this splendid book with great photos and praise the classy concept explaining this historical phenomenon, and hope more readers embrace to be stylish.
Angela van der Burght
