any of us today imagine that sexual freedom has progressed in recent

years—that everything has changed, for better or worse. This is mostly an illusion; a reading of history reveals periods of licentiousness (imperial Rome, late-seventeenth-century England, the "floating world" of eighteenth-century Japan) far in excess of what we are currently experiencing. Gender roles are certainly changing, but they have changed before.

Society is in a state of constant flux, but there is something that does not

change: the vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the

time. They play the role allotted to them. Conformity is a constant because

humans are social creatures who are always imitating one another. At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.

We should never complain about most people's slavish conformity, however, for it offers untold possibilities of power and seduction to those who are up for a few risks. Dandies have existed in all ages and cultures (Al-

cibiades in ancient Greece, Korechika in late-tenth-century Japan), and

wherever they have gone they have thrived on the conformist role playing

of others. The Dandy displays a true and radical difference from other peo-

ple, a difference of appearance and manner. Since most of us are secretly

oppressed by our lack of freedom, we are drawn to those who are more

fluid and flaunt their difference.

Dandies seduce socially as well as sexually; groups form around them,

their style is wildly imitated, an entire court or crowd will fall in love

with them. In adapting the Dandy character for your own purposes, re-

member that the Dandy is by nature a rare and beautiful flower. Be differ-

ent in ways that are both striking and aesthetic, never vulgar; poke fun at

current trends and styles, go in a novel direction, and be supremely uninter-

ested in what anyone else is doing. Most people are insecure; they will

wonder what you are up to, and slowly they will come to admire and imi-

tate you, because you express yourself with total confidence.

The Dandy has traditionally been defined by clothing, and certainly most Dandies create a unique visual style. Beau Brummel, the most famous Dandy of all, would spend hours on his toilette, particularly the inimitably styled knot in his necktie, for which he was famous throughout early nineteenth-century England. But a Dandy's style cannot be obvious, for Dandies are subtle, and never try hard for attention—attention comes to them. The person whose clothes are flagrantly different has little imagination or taste. Dandies show their difference in the little touches that mark their disdain for convention: Théophile Gautier's red vest, Oscar Wilde's green velvet suit, Andy Warhol's silver wigs. The great English Prime Min-ister Benjamin Disraeli had two magnificent canes, one for morning, one for evening; at noon he would change canes, no matter where he was. The female Dandy works similarly. She may adopt male clothing, say, but if she does, a touch here or there will set her truly apart: no man ever dressed quite like George Sand. The overtall hat, the riding boots worn on the streets of Paris, made her a sight to behold.

Remember, there must be a reference point. If your visual style is to-tally unfamiliar, people will think you at best an obvious attention-getter, at worst crazy. Instead, create your own fashion sense by adapting and altering prevailing styles to make yourself an object of fascination. Do this right and you will be wildly imitated. The Count d'Orsay, a great London dandy of the 1830s and 1840s, was closely watched by fashionable people; one day, caught in a sudden London rainstorm, he bought a paltrok, a kind of heavy, hooded duffle coat, off the back of a Dutch sailor. The paltrok immediately became the coat to wear. Having people imitate you, of course, is a sign of your powers of seduction.

The nonconformity of Dandies, however, goes far beyond appearances. It is an attitude toward life that sets them apart; adopt that attitude and a circle of followers will form around you.

Dandies are supremely impudent. They don't give a damn about other people, and never try to please. In the court of Louis XIV, the writer La Bruyere noticed that courtiers who tried hard to please were invariably on the way down; nothing was more anti-seductive. As Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote, "Dandies please women by displeasing them."

Impudence was fundamental to the appeal of Oscar Wilde. In a Lon-don theater one night, after the first performance of one of Wilde's plays, the ecstatic audience yelled for the author to appear onstage. Wilde made them wait and wait, then finally emerged, smoking a cigarette and wearing an expression of total disdain. "It may be bad manners to appear here smoking, but it is far worse to disturb me when I am smoking," he scolded his fans. The Count d'Orsay was equally impudent. At a London club one night, a Rothschild who was notoriously cheap accidentally dropped a gold coin on the floor, then bent down to look for it. The count immediately whipped out a thousand-franc note (worth much more than the coin), rolled it up, lit it like a candle, and got down on all fours, as if to help light the way in the search. Only a Dandy could get away with such audacity. The insolence of the Rake is tied up with his desire to conquer a woman; he cares for nothing else. The insolence of the Dandy, on the other hand, is aimed at society and its conventions. It is not a woman he cares to conquer but a whole group, an entire social world. And since people are generally oppressed by the obligation of always being polite and self-sacrificing, they are delighted to spend time around a person who disdains such niceties.

Dandies are masters of the art of living. They live for pleasure, not for work; they surround themselves with beautiful objects and eat and drink

The Dandy • 49

Sometimes, however, the tyranny of elegance became altogether insupportable. A Mr. Boothby committed suicide and left a note saying he could no longer endure the ennui of buttoning and unbuttoning.

— T H E GAME OF HEARTS:

HARRIETTE WILSON'S

MEMOIRS, EDITED BY LESLEY

BLANCH

This royal manner which

[the dandy] raises to the

height of true royalty, the

dandy has taken this from

women, who alone seem

naturally made for such a

role. It is a somewhat by

using the manner and the

method of women that

the dandy dominates. And

this usurpation of

femininity, he makes

women themselves approve

of this.... The dandy

has something antinatural

and androgynous about

him, which is precisely how

he is able to endlessly

seduce.

—JULES LEMAÎTRE,

LES CONTEMPORAINS

50 • The Art of Seduction

with the same relish they show for their clothes. This was how the great Roman writer Petronius, author of the Satyricon, was able to seduce the emperor Nero. Unlike the dull Seneca, the great Stoic thinker and Nero's tutor, Petronius knew how to make every detail of life a grand aesthetic ad-venture, from a feast to a simple conversation. This is not an attitude you should impose on those around you—you can't make yourself a nuisance— but if you simply seem socially confident and sure of your taste, people will be drawn to you. The key is to make everything an aesthetic choice. Your ability to alleviate boredom by making life an art will make your company highly prized.

The opposite sex is a strange country we can never know, and this ex-cites us, creates the proper sexual tension. But it is also a source of annoy-ance and frustration. Men do not understand how women think, and vice versa; each tries to make the other act more like a member of their own sex. Dandies may never try to please, but in this one area they have a pleas-ing effect: by adopting psychological traits of the opposite sex, they appeal to our inherent narcissism. Women identified with Rudolph Valentino's delicacy and attention to detail in courtship; men identified with Lou Andreas-Salomé's lack of interest in commitment. In the Heian court of eleventh-century Japan, Sei Shonagon, the writer of The Pillow Book, was powerfully seductive for men, especially literary types. She was fiercely in-dependent, wrote poetry with the best, and had a certain emotional dis-tance. Men wanted more from her than just to be her friend or companion, as if she were another man; charmed by her empathy for male psychology, they fell in love with her. This kind of mental transvestism—the ability to enter the spirit of the opposite sex, adapt to their way of thinking, mirror their tastes and attitudes—can be a key element in seduction. It is a way of mesmerizing your victim.

According to Freud, the human libido is essentially bisexual; most peo-ple are in some way attracted to people of their own sex, but social con-straints (varying with culture and historical period) repress these impulses. The Dandy represents a release from such constraints. In several of Shake-speare's plays, a young girl (back then, the female roles in the theater were actually played by male actors) has to go into disguise and dresses up as a boy, eliciting all kinds of sexual interest from men, who later are delighted to find out that the boy is actually a girl. (Think, for example, of Rosalind in As You Like It.) Entertainers such as Josephine Baker (known as the Chocolate Dandy) and Marlene Dietrich would dress up as men in their acts, making themselves wildly popular—among men. Meanwhile the slightly feminized male, the pretty boy, has always been seductive to women. Valen-tino embodied this quality. Elvis Presley had feminine features (the face, the hips), wore frilly pink shirts and eye makeup, and attracted the attention of women early on. The filmmaker Kenneth Anger said of Mick Jagger that it was "a bisexual charm which constituted an important part of the attrac-tion he had over young girls... and which acted upon their unconscious." In Western culture for centuries, in fact, feminine beauty has been far more

The Dandy • 51

fetishized than male beauty, so it is understandable that a feminine-looking face like that of Montgomery Clift would have more seductive power than that of John Wayne.

The Dandy figure has a place in politics as well. John F. Kennedy was a strange mix of the masculine and feminine, virile in his toughness with the Russians, and in his White House lawn football games, yet feminine in his graceful and dapper appearance. This ambiguity was a large part of his ap-peal. Disraeli was an incorrigible Dandy in dress and manner; some were suspicious of him as a result, but his courage in not caring what people thought of him also won him respect. And women of course adored him, for women always adore a Dandy. They appreciated the gentleness of his manner, his aesthetic sense, his love of clothes—in other words, his femi-nine qualities. The mainstay of Disraeli's power was in fact a female fan: Queen Victoria.

Do not be misled by the surface disapproval your Dandy pose may elicit. Society may publicize its distrust of androgyny (in Christian the-ology, Satan is often represented as androgynous), but this conceals its fascination; what is most seductive is often what is most repressed. Learn a playful dandyism and you will become the magnet for people's dark, unre-alized yearnings.

The key to such power is ambiguity. In a society where the roles every-one plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite in-terest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

Symbol: The Orchid. Its shape and color oddly suggest both sexes, its odor is sweet and decadent—it is a tropical flower of evil. Delicate and highly cultivated, it is prized for its rarity; it is unlike any other flower.