Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion

Abstract

This beautifully produced catalogue can whet our appetite for a stunning exhibition that will open the new Fashion Gallery at the Manchester Art Gallery in October 2022. The exhibition is based on the collection formerly housed at the Gallery of Costume at Platt Hall, an affiliate of the Manchester Art Gallery. The Platt Hall gallery was founded in 1947 with the substantial collection of dress historians Willet and Phillis Cunnington, and the size and scope of its collection rivals those of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Fashion Museum in Bath. The Platt Hall building itself is now being repaired and reconceived for other purposes, and the dress collection is being re-housed in the main museum. The catalogue’s substantial introduction is co-written by the editors and exhibition co-curators: Miles Lambert, long-time costume curator at Platt Hall, and Shaun Cole, associate professor of fashion at the University of Southampton. Additional contributors for the following eight chapters include curators Rebecca Milner and Ben Whyman, performance studies scholar Kate Dorney, and lecturer in fashion and masculinity Jay McCauley Bowstead. Taken together, this collection represents a wide range of approaches within current menswear scholarship, through the lens of one substantial collection. The well-written text demonstrates a sophisticated level of primary source analysis and offers multiple methodological approaches that demonstrate the variety of ways in which men’s fashion manifests itself in the cultural imaginary. Fashion plates show what is fashionable, while satirical cartoons make fun of those who take dressing to excess. Beautifully photographed historical garments and images of contemporary runway fashion models show off high-end design and construction on the idealized figure. Portrait paintings and studio photography portraits show how men and designers want to be perceived, while street photography and close-up