The artist, the dandy and men’s fashion in the Belle-Époque in Rio

Abstract

This article examines the influence and impact of European dandyism on the clothing of artists and public figures – key players in fashion – in Rio de Janeiro during the Belle-Époque by the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX century. The interpretive stance of this model questions symbolic and aesthetic choices and ways of building and expressing distinct world-views, for one side, the symbols and signs associated to the European literary and artistic dandyism, and for the other, the north-American rational and pragmatic dressing standards, which are key to understanding the various choices and successive movements that form contemporaneity.