Le dandy de l'année: Lapo Elkann

[walter-rebuttand]

He’s young, good-looking and extremely wealthy. He’s cosmopolitan — fluent in six languages, born and now living in the hip part of New York City, raised in Brazil, educated in England and France, the scion of Italy’s preeminent family (the Agnellis, not the Mafia), and quintessentially Italian. Style and fashion form his profession, perhaps through osmosis from his aunt, Diane von Furstenberg. He’s linked with sleek cars and even sleeker women. Perennially named to the world’s best-dressed lists, he’s officially a GQ “style icon.”

But that’s not why Dandyism.net has chosen Lapo Edouard Elkann its first ever Dandy of the Year.

D.net salutes Elkann because this year he returned from exile. All good dandies must go into exile, be it to escape gambling debts or threatened arrest. Brummell and Jimmy Walker did it. Oscar Wilde did it, but too late. The Duke of Windsor did it, but for love. Celebrities or wannabes, like Sebastian Horsley, don’t go into exile. They merely go to rehab or jail or — worst of all — they don’t go away at all.

In 2005, Elkann went into exile from Italy, his job as Fiat’s head of worldwide brand promotions, and public attention. This year he has gradually returned in a carefully choreographed public relations campaign that nicely coincides with the launch of his latest venture, selling very high-priced Italian sunglasses.

But more impressive is why he went into exile in the first place. One of Fiat’s two largest shareholders, the paramour of Italian starlet Martina Stella, the handsome face of the revival of the Fiat brand, and the hero of world fashion press, Elkann almost tossed it all away with a near-fatal overdose of cocaine and heroin downed with an alcoholic chaser while partying with Patrizia, a fifty-four year old transsexual hooker, and two of her business associates at her apartment in Turin’s red-light district.

His irresponsibility, even if he were desperate for Laposuction, ranks right up there with abdicating the throne for a mannish double divorcé or dashing your literary career by dallying with rent-boys while you have two smash plays on the boards.

Of course screwing up magnificently alone doesn’t make a dandy. A dandy must also have elegance and the proper demeanor. Elkann fills the bill on both counts.

He looks like a dandy should. The thirty-year-old’s personal style is eclectic. One day he will be precisely dressed in a blue double-breasted suit, spread-collar white shirt, solid tie and puffed pocket square, or a navy blazer and stripped pants, with red socks and brown shoes. On the next, he’ll wear a bold check suit with scarf or he’ll spice up one of the impeccably cut suits he inherited from nonno Gianni Agnelli by wearing sneakers with no socks. For day wear he quirkily favors tuxedo jackets in bold and unlikely checks. He’s commissioned a Mediterranean blue suit from the prestigious Rome tailors Caraceni, executed to his specifications, accented by grosgrain lapels with the proportions of a 1959 Cadillac’s tail fins and a built-in cummerbund waistband, which he’ll wear with velvet slippers.

More and more, his slim frame — the product of the gym, bikes and skateboards — will be clad in something creatively casual that discreetly exposes tuffs of his chest hair and several chains and pendants: a double-breasted tweed jacket with an unbuttoned lime shirt, or an unbuttoned pinstriped royal blue Oxford shirt, with sleeves rolled up, tucked into a dark blue pair of trousers cinched, reminiscent of Astaire, with a rope. On his best days, he hits upon a brilliant combination of the classic and the relaxed, such as a linen pinstripe suit paired with a denim shirt, and achieves the elusive sprezzatura.

He pursues dandy hobbies such as chain smoking and drinking a dozen expressos a day. He’s an accomplished sailor; he won the 2003 Fastnet trans-ocean sailboat race with his older, more responsible brother aboard Stealth, their ultra-modern yacht. His preferred mode of transportation, when he isn’t forced to drive a Fiat-affiliate Maserati or Alfa Romeo, is racing around on a very fast, very big motorcycle.

He’s charming and social, although perhaps a bit voluble for a dandy, a regular for breakfast and dinner at the chi-chi downtown restaurants. He exhibited a wry, self-deprecating humor by hanging in his studio a poster for “I Was a Man,” a movie about a hermaphrodite; it bears the tag line “The Body of a Man, the Feelings of a Woman.”

We especially admire his dandy’s sense of superiority. Although he made his mark as Fiat’s promotions manager by splashing the Fiat logo on everything from clothes and accessories to comestibles and potables, he nowadays disdains such vulgar displays for himself. When it comes to his own clothes and accessories, “No logo, and you don’t advertise for anyone,” says the fashion entrepreneur, “I don’t believe in imposed luxury. I believe in built luxury. Something you refine with your own taste. Mass luxury is not my luxury.”

[h16]

Une mouche s'est glissée dans les photos ci-dessus. Ami lecteur, sauras-tu la retrouver ?

[Saucer]

Bas les masques !