Russian Dandysm: Gender Controversies and Ideology of Fashion

Lecture notes from November 27, 2007

The lecture was held by a professor from the State University of Moscow, Russia and concentrated on the 18-19th century portrait of fashion. One typical face in fashion at that time was prince Kurakin in the beginning of the 18th Century. For him and the rest of society fashion was a sign of high status and wealth. Prince Kurakin wore luxurious costumes. A characteristic of a time could be found in the foucauldian concept of punishment and prison policy.

Peter the Great was the one to reform dress. He was even called the "British prime-minister of taste" and by that was meant British influence of dandysm, minimalist style. At that time in Moscow, St. Petersbourg and elsewhere in Europe most tailors were Germans and magazines were in French. I mean - high society magazines. The language of fashion has always been French, as a lot of influence came from France.

It is hard to put down into text right now, but the Russian letter f- symbolizes dandysm. The f-letter remains of the pose of a dandy, with hands on the hips. One of the famous dandys of Russia was Kusmin - the Oscar Wilde of Russia. He was extremely expressive and off-showing gay-dandy. Dandysim is also related to cross-dressing where dandies influenced women and there were even female-dandies.

Dandy-style represents confident, intelligent, lady-killer-look. The images of a dandy was later also used in advertising and probably is still being done sometimes. This is how Russian style was constructed. During Soviet time a new male-ideal was constructed and his made it very hard to still be dandy.

Generally there was also lot of opposition to European dandysm. Certain people resisted this style opposing themselves to dandies by wearing national clothes. Another movement was related to leftist-democracy that questioned why someone would dress exclusively at all - people should be poor and simple, there is no need to dress up. Moreover, as dandysm was related to homosexualism and that was definitely the open topic in the 19th Century and also makes today hard to guess or know how many of the dandies were really gay and how many of them just looked different.