A Historical Review of Black Dandyism

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to review the history of black dandyism and to analyze the negotiation of identity through the style of black people and its implications. For this, research was conducted into the literature on dandyism, black dandyism books, previous studies, and internet resources. The study’s scope encompasses the United Kingdom, the United States, and West and South Africa, which are related to the 15th and 16th-century Atlantic slave trade in which early black dandyism emerged, and traces its development to the present. It explains that the history of black dandyism is the development of the dandified luxury slave into the self-conscious modern black dandy as a self-fashioning dandy. It argues that African and African diasporic identities have been transformed from the negative black stereotypes formed under Western colonialism to dandies with dignity who have expressed their outstanding aesthetics through the process. Black dandyism, unlike Western white dandyism, which is distinguished by an aristocratic taste, has political implications related to black acclimatization to the colonialism and racist world-view deeply rooted within black culture, as well as to post-colonial and post-racist resistance.

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