Dandies ahoy!
I’ve been involved in the vintage world for a good 20 years, and nowadays there is a calendar of events that bring out the retro-dapper crowd. Spring seems to see a surge in these get-togethers—in April we had Champagne Charlie’s Easter Parade, and May saw both the London Hat Walk and the Grand Flanêur Walk. What these three events all have in common is that they are very much about marching through the town being looked at.
Having moved from London to Penzance last September, I’m not around in town for all these beanfeasts, but I was able to go to the Grand Flâneur Walk, is a parade of dandies and vintage clothing enthusiasts. Organised by The Chap (which used to be a magazine and is now a sort of club, members of which get vague benefits in return for a membership fee), it looks to celebrate the lost art of flâneurie—wandering through the city, seeing and being seen, at one with the psychogeography and with no particular destination in mind. This of course makes it a difficult event to organise, and some years the mob starts to splinter in different directions almost immediately. Perhaps because of this, there is always a period of at least an hour at the beginning where fops gradually assemble, surrounded by photographers. Eventually Chap supremo Gustav Temple gives some sort of address before we head off.
It’s been an annual event each May for about seven years now, and last November there was also a winter edition—not sure if that will be a regular feature in the Chap calendar. Up till now we’ve always gathered by the statue of Beau Brummell on Jermyn Street, but this time Gustav shifted the meeting point to a wine bar in Covent Garden, which had offered a free glass of Champagne for the first 100 attendees. I have to say that it is not an ideal place: packed with tourists, it offers little space to start off with, and the wine bar is in the lower section, a sort of pit that gets more and more crammed as people arrive. The steps down to the pit were like a celebrity red carpet with photographers snapping everyone as they went down.
I have no idea what Gustav’s address was about, as I was too far away to hear over the hubbub, but I can see from the photos that he was reading from Paris France by Gertrude Stein. Eventually the crowd lumbered off and some actual flâneurie began.
It struck me that the crowd this time was more diverse than usual, with plenty of people in the caravan who were dressed up, but not in what I would call an obviously Chappist way (by which I mean a vintage take on gentlemanly dapperness). In this sense it reminded me of the Hat Walk, a couple of weeks earlier, which has always celebrated all kinds of headgear, and not just vintage styles. I was also struck by what a social event it is—it’s a chance to catch up with fellow dandies whom one may only see once a year, as well as a chance to make new acquaintances, and I struck up several interesting conversations with strangers. Although the walk has no official destination, it does tend to lurch from pub to pub. After the first three it was early evening and I peeled away, though I don’t doubt several more hostelries were frequented before the last fop turned into a pumpkin.
You can see more photos from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720333803037/.
