• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.4
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• pp.63-80
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• 2004

Elegance in dress has been mentioned as an important term for explaining a beauty of dress and a fashion image through the times in the history of dress. Nevertheless, it has been spoken indeterminately without analyzing the accurate meaning. In addition, almost all the scattered discourses of it were very limited to womenswear. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework for a better understanding of the concept of elegance and its aesthetic characteristics expressed visually on dress from the holistic viewpoint, focusing on male elegance in dress. To obtain the purpose, the documentary study and the practical analysis were carried out. Elegance in dress is based upon the idea of aristocratic taste cultivated by good breeding. It is expressed visually through not only the carefully contrived dress but also a sort of aura of dressed body with skillful ease. Its aesthetic values consist of luxury, nobility, refinement, femininity, harmony. Though male elegant styles had already existed throughout the history of dress, it was Mannerism in the 16th century which expressed ‘studied elegance’ for the first time. On the grounds of both the classification of periodic styles and the periodic values, they can be defined and categorized into Mannerism Elegance, Salon Elegance, Modern Elegance Since Dandyism, Aestheticism Elegance. In the late 20th century they can be recognised as Classic Dandyism Elegance, Soft Casual Elegance, Elaborate Heroic Elegance. Although male elegance in dress has been visualized in different ways depending on periodic values, it has essentially been a refined beauty of high class which was valued until recent years. Its common plastic features appear as soft shapes, subtle colors and delicate fabrics modulated with exquisiteness and well-adorned appearance, graceful behavior make elegant styles completed. All of elegant styles have m common with refinement, harmony as main aesthetic values.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.131-140
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• 2004

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of the color of jacket. dress shirt, necktie. and perceiver's gender on image perceptions of male, and to examine how clothing color preferences varies according to perceiver's gender and age. The stimuli of 8 pictures of male and the semantic differential scale were used to evaluate image perception. Subjects were 192 males and females in Seoul. The colors of jacket gave significant influences on perception of potency. elegance, preference, and manliness. The colors of dress shirt gave a significant influence on perception of manliness, the necktie's colors gave influences on elegance and visibility. Perceiver's gender did not give significant influences on the image perception. Visibility had an interaction effect by the colors of jacket and dress shirt. Potency and preference evaluation had interaction effects by the colors of jacket. dress shirt. and necktie. White dress shirt had positive effects on the perception of potency and preference in the case of matching with dark blue jacket and red necktie, and blue shirt had a positive effect on the perception of potency and preference in matching with dark blue jacket and blue necktie. The preference of dark grey suit and black shirt showed significant differences according to gender. Dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue shirt had significant differences according to the age group.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.39-48
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to examine closely the aesthetic characteristics featured in dandy's costume. Dandy was term used on for a man excessively fond of and overly concerned with clothes, exemplified by Beau Brummell, Lord Byron, and count d'Orsay, who greatly in gluenced men's fashions in England and France. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century George Brummell, the prototype of the dandy, made upper-class English country clothes, especially riding clothes, into the height of men's fashion in the city. In the early 1800s the alterations he made, particularly with regard to fit and cut, established these as the critical signifiers in men's dress. Brummell's style, particularly for day, was essentially restrained and disciplined, and set a standard for sober discretion, appropriateness and taste which governed men's clothing until well into the twentieth century. The aesthetic characteristics expressed in dandy's dress are the aristocratic superiority of mind, the restrained beauty in absolute simplicity, and the pursuit of the individual beauty. Brummell's kind of dandyism instigated the idea of establishing a new kind of aritocracy, an aritocracy based on talent. Over the years this kind of cultural and social coup has been played out in different ways but has remained, like the twentieth-century concept of the avant-garde, a fundamentally male preserve. He advocated unobtrusive darkblue fitted coats, cream-colored trousers, elaborately tied cravats, absence of showy fabrics or excessive decoration, and impeccable grooming. The status of the perfectly tied cravat as the hallmark of genteel elegance, as the last keystone of Fashion's arch, had been established by Beau Brummell.