The Boulevardier

Here’s another article I wrote for Louis Vuitton Night discussing the outlaw as fashion role model…

When it is late afternoon and the sun has finally begun to set and the birds have begun to wind down, sitting in their nests, and reflecting on the day’s activities, often the boulevardier will take a cue from his feathered friends and sit, in his customary lounging attire, and perhaps with a glass of wine, and consider radical mansy fashion, and all the implications of being a well-dressed anarchist in today’s society. While often breathtakingly glamorous, the well-dressed anarchist is an anomaly these days, something that might fill the gentle gentleman with ennui. However, being the sophisticated and considerate fellow he is, the boulevardier will never entertain feelings of malaise for more than a picturesque moment and drawing on his knowledge of the history of radical men’s fashion will quickly return to his witty and good-humored self, leaving his self-consciousness to the birds.

But for all the lovely amateurs, let’s consider a few historical points in the history of radical mansy fashion, and why these mansies might fill the boulevardier with bountiful hope and optimism. Radical mansies have a rich history of dressing well, but it is in the interest of the unfashionable to make it seem otherwise. As mentioned before in this column, it is crucial to the construction of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to promote the image of man as the viewer and never the viewed, and promote clothes that fulfill this role, whether through military garments masquerading as casual wear, suits that intend on making all men look alike or slovenly ill-fitting outfits that have no place in public and should be used for nothing less than what one might wear to romp in a tar pit. It is for this reason, that the prevalent history of men’s fashion is both written about the rich and boring, and by the rich and boring, and amounts to little more than a discussion of the cut in suit, silhouette of pant and the length or material of the jacket.

It is therefore, with great honor that the boulevardier now introduces the Outlaw, into the history of radical mansy fashion. Outlaw is a very broad topic and often the construction of heroic outlaws serves the same conventional fashion we radicals reject, yet most often outlaws operate outside of the status quo, either in direct confrontation or more subtly. Outlaws can vary from the explicit to the implicit. One of my fashion favorites is bank robbing anarchist Jules Bonnot, whose partiality for fine garments is well known. But another more contemporary favorite is the stylist Dapper Dan in Harlem who became famous for dressing local drug dealers in things like jump suits made from the LV logo and later designed clothes for rappers and celebrities such as Salt ‘N Peppa, Run DMC, and Mike Tyson.

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Tags: birdles, confrontational eccentricity, fashion history, gender, role models