LANGUAGE IS THE MESSAGE
Language is an irreplaceable tool for understanding and documenting our lives.
Written, spoken and visual, language mirrors who we are. It reflects our histories, narrates our experiences, and traces our existence beyond a cycle that is destined to end right from the beginning.
WISH FULFILLMENT
What is home? Surely not a house, the building that contains us, our families and our material belongings. What is the “home” of our hard-earned, tried-and-tested beliefs,morals and ideas that we share with our tribe? The abstract space that encircles our chosen communities. The nucleus of the all-important group feeling, the “Asabiyyah”—the natural affection towards our fellow group members, which is the base for the rise and fall of a community, according to the 14th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun. Continue reading “Dapper Dan 32 is out!”
When we first published Dapper Dan, we wrote a manifesto proclaiming how much we enjoyed opinionated men. Men with a sense of purpose and a soul. Intelligent, creative men with ideas and ideology. Men who didn’t fit—and didn’t want to fit—the standards set by others. Misfits, in other words.
Everybody has some form of daddy issues. Fifteen-year-old teenagers are extremely prone to them. They revolt against and complain about the very figures they depend on. Fifteen years ago, we imagined and created a very different magazine to the one published today. Continue reading “Dapper Dan 30 is out!”
Fear: An overwhelming awe towards the divine; the dread we feel in our everyday existence; an experience of the unexpected that leads to panic.
This powerful emotion has long been immortalised in art and poetry. And now, for its 29th issue, Dapper Dan explores the important relationship we have with the cult of fear today. Continue reading “Dapper Dan 29 is out!”
For its 28th issue, DAPPER DAN embarks on a journey to The Invisible City—a fictitious metropolis without borders, tied together by shared beliefs, memories and chance. A tribute to the communities, friends and neighbourhoods we encounter within the fertile terrains of the magazine. Continue reading “Dapper Dan 28 is out!”
In this, our 20th issue, Dapper Dan is the everyman. We explore the sense of self in the individual. We explore the mood of individualism at the core of current fashion. In the pages of our magazine, modern masculinity plays out. Continue reading “Dapper Dan 20 is Out!”
Dapper Dan 19 looks at how we—as artists, writers, thinkers—carve out time and space in a world that bombards us constantly, keeping us ever-notified. In the pages of our magazine, we build new rules. We champion those who move against this mechanism, embracing iconoclasm in an Instagram age. We question Raven Smith’s content and commentary, Samuel Ross’s garments and products, and Andrew Bolton’s curation and exhibitions. We showcase duo FAKA’s radical singularity and the structures in tailor Daniel Haworth’s craft. We shoot Celine SS19 and capture Zegna’s collection, placing garments alongside objects to reveal both the inanimate and the human.
Menswear and philosophy are mined. Ideas are distilled. Dapper Dan 19 explores the intimacies of alienation, a new individualism.
Nick Knight considers the communication of beauty, while Mike Meiré expounds upon ugly. In this magazine, images and print are held up, analysed, lauded in close conversation. Dries Van Noten reflects on revelation. Garments are drawn out, draped, drooled over, before being styled and shot. As we pit banality and intricacy against each other, objects are upended and suspended. Klaus Stockhausen turns tables, Olivier Saillard turns his eye to design and James Massiah turns his back on faith.
Menswear and philosophy merge and melt, each concept drowning the other to become unrecognisable. Here, ideas are distilled. Among pages of print, DAPPER DAN turns 18
