HAMISH BOWLES
European Editor-at-Large of US Vogue
There’s an Annie Leibovitz photograph of Sean Combs ( Vogue, October 1999) that really strikes me. I find his attitude in that image to be so elegant. He demonstrates a self-assurance that shows he’s totally at ease with his style.
Even if he’s only semi-dressed, Sean has this attitude, this dazzle with the jewellery and a kind of audacity with the pants. For me the whole shoot really exemplified a contemporary dandy: someone with the courage of his convictions, and who had this body language and demeanour that was so comfortable – both in and out of his clothing! I found that very powerful and elegant. It still r esonates with me.
In another capacity, my benchmark for sartorial male flair was always Cecil Beaton. I love his style for all kinds of reasons. It’s eclectic and grounded in the more traditional tenets of Savile Row dressing, but there’s a huge amount of leeway within that. I love that he accumulated clothing as he travelled, like when he went to Salzburg to get these amazing little tracht jackets made at Lanz, a great clothier of traditional Tyrolean garb. And he always had something a little quirky about his accessories, even his straw hats, which were a vanity measure to cover the fact that he was balding. Which is an elegant solution!
I think Sean and Cecil were quintessential though different dandies. They both had the same idea about finding your style and being absolutely comfortable in it, and relishing the idea of getting dr essed, and getting dr essed up.
I was also struck during the menswear shows in Paris this past summer, particularly by Virgil Abloh’s audiences – his community of like-minded fashion rebels. I thought they looked completely magnificent. There’s a fearlessness, an overt embrace of jewellery for men, amazing accessorising, and these very exaggerated, dandified combinations of print, pattern and texture. Observing all of this was one of the most inspiring things to come out of P aris that week.