dandy

Male figure conspicuous for tasteful fastidiousness, particularly in dress. The famous Regency dandy George (‘Beau’) Brummell (1778-1840) helped to give literary currency to the figure of the dandy, particularly in England and France, providing a model and symbol of the triumph of style for the Francophile Oscar Wilde and for 19th-century French writers such as Charles Baudelaire, J K Huysmans, and the extravagantly romantic novelist and critic Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889), biographer of Brummell.