Partly because of their affinity with literature—by then fashionable novels had already begun to confuse fiction with reality (2.2)—attitudes such as Beckford’s or Byron’s gave rise to a new form of secular sovereignty very much in keeping with its time:

The dandy possesses the courage to give rise a new individual aristocracy that materializes in different types of attitudes... singularity, distancing, contention, celebrity, originality or rebelliousness are the answers of this character to a decadent society, halfway between tedium in the face of obsolete conventions and uncertainty in the face of new social models.¹

The dandy’s distancing echoes that of the sovereign, and with it he achieves his goal, to be admired. But he is not a simple snob. It may be that the snob and the dandy “practice the same religion,” says de Villena, “but the difference between them is the same that a Catholic would find between a sanctimonious neighbour—the snob—and Saint Teresa of Ávila—the dandy.”² Coldness of manners has always been a powerful incentive for the masses.

Like all previous forms of sovereignty, this new aristocracy—secular and highly individual—creates a zone of exception. While sovereignty in its political aspect configures an indistinction between law and violence (0.10, 1.17, 1.18), dandyism gives rise to an exception that “while still respecting conventionalities […] plays with them. While admitting their power, it suffers from and revenges itself upon them, and pleads them as an excuse against themselves; dominates and is dominated by them in turn.”³ This ambiguity toward social convention, however, does not make the dandy a classless individual, he is rather sui generis..

As a secular sovereign, the dandy inherits the individuality that previous to the fall of the Old Regime was only possible for royalty (1.12). As a matter of fact, if he manages to exempt himself from fashion, that great standardizer, is because he transforms it into the most radical vehicle of personal style. His realm is aesthetics, fashion and opinion are his main weapons.

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1. Carlos Primo and Leticia García, “Una apología del dandismo”, 25-6. ↩︎
2. de Villena, “La bella provocación de lo diferente: pinceladas dandis”, 9. ↩︎
3. d’Aurevilly, Of Dandyism and of George Brummell, 114-15. ↩︎