Suit you, sir: The art of male attire

The bow-ties are suspended, symbolically, in a glass case like butterflies. One is white and fluffy like a kitten; one is made of fake pearls; one is in a kind of delicate pink and white tartan. The most startling is deep turquoise and edged with fur. Do people – men – wear such things? Yes, apparently they do.

In a display case near by is an elaborate, white cotton shirt once worn by Oscar Wilde; a minimalist black jacket worn on stage by David Bowie; and a pair of multi-coloured braces which held up the trousers of the French 19th-century novelist Honoré de Balzac.

In the unlikely setting of the small Norman seaside town of Granville, an exhibition has opened to record two centuries of "dandyism" – from radical, in-your-face, male peacockery to studied elegance. The exhibition is called Dandysmes, in the plural, to emphasise the fact that dandyism, at its best, is always individual, even heroic. (It takes, one imagines, a kind of heroism to wear a turquoise, fur-edged bow-tie.)

Why Granville? Granville (pop 15,000) is not a "dandy" town. Built on a rocky outcrop facing the Mont Saint Michel and Brittany, it sometimes calls itself the Monaco of the North. On a rainy day, its forbidding, grey stones make it look more like the Grimsby of the South.

On the cliff-top beside Granville, there exists, however, a "dandy" house: a pink 19th-century villa with stunning gardens overlooking the Channel and, on a clear day, the Channel Islands. In 1909, this house was the birthplace of the most influential of all French fashion designers, Christian Dior.

The house, Les Rhumbs, has been converted into a museum and shrine, to Dior, to haute-couture and to female elegance.

This spring and summer, however, until 21 September, the house also contains a unique exhibition, the first of its kind ever assembled, devoted to two centuries of dandy memorabilia and images, from "Beau" Brummell to David Bowie and Justin Timberlake.

The exhibition is the brain-child of the art and fashion historian, Jean-Luc Dufresne, who is chief scientific adviser to the Dior museum at Granville. The show marks the bi-centenary of a celebrated French dandy and author, with an ideal dandy name, Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly.

Barbey d'Aurevilly met George "Beau" Brummell, the British father of all dandies, when he was living in poverty and exile in Caen in 1835. The Frenchman wrote a book about Brummell which became a kind of 19th-century dandy bible. Barbey's most celebrated saying, towards the end of an occasionally miserable life, was: "I have had some terrible times ... but I never abandoned my white gloves."

One of the lessons from the exhibition, and its excellent catalogue, is that dandyism – from Brummell to Oscar Wilde to David Bowie and John Galliano – has almost always been a British-led phenomenon. Female chic may be forever French but radical, or over-the-top, male elegance is, to the French at any rate, largely British-inspired.

M. Dufresne, originator and chief curator of the exhibition, says that he wanted to explore a conundrum, which is, he believes, as relevant in 2008 as it was in 1808. "Why is it regarded as suspicious if men dress well or if men are as concerned with their clothes as women? Why do so many men find it difficult to express themselves in what they wear? How does the dandy phenomenon help us to understand this mystery?

"One can, as many people do, dismiss dandies as effeminate or homosexual but that is not always the case and has, historically, not always been true. Take, for instance, King Henry VIII of England. He was a macho figure, even a brutal kind of man. And yet he wore delicate lace and clothes which displayed to best effect his fine calves. Why have we lost that male concern for wearing clothes as a kind of art-form and self-expression?"

The men who came to the official opening of the show – many of them from the Paris fashion world – entered into the spirit of the occasion. There were white suits with pale-blue silk scarves. There were dark suits with flowing white scarves and flowing grey hair. There was a young man in a black and yellow, braided uniform. He looked like a cross between a 19th-century hussar and a 20th-century brass-bandsman.

The curator, M. Dufresne, had dark-mustard trousers, buttoned at the calf, a black velvet jacket and an ice-blue and white waist-coat and cravatte. Your correspondent, to M. Dufresne's politely unexpressed disgust, wore his usual uniform of baggy fawn jumper and dark blue trousers. So much for radical, British, male elegance. Dandyism, as a self-conscious movement, began in Britain in Georgian times, apparently as a way of stemming the tide of drab, bourgeois values, and clothes, generated by the rising manufacturing classes.

Beau Brummell was not, in his origins, an aristocrat but he explained "dandyism" in his conversations with M. Barbey d'Aurevilly, as a way of defending the "aristocratic" ideals threatened by the French and industrial revolutions.

Over the next century or so, dandyism alternated between something avowedly conservative and elitist and something revolutionary, individualistic and artistic. In both cases, the motivation was anti-bourgeois and anti-conformist. The two principal forms of dandyism – the imitative and the foppish, the creative and sharply stylish – compete and overlap to this day.

The prologue to the catalogue to the exhibition has been written by one of the most celebrated of contemporary dandies, the British-born fashion designer, John Galliano, chief designer for Dior. The show contains one of his most outrageous outfits, a vast tartan military greatcoat. Galliano, although one of the most creative and aggressive of designers, falls on the foppish side of the argument.

"The dandy aspires to be the perfect gentleman," he writes. "An independent aristocrat, worthy and determined, full of dreams and desires and always young at heart ... The dandy owes it to himself to be permanently sublime. He must live and sleep in front of a mirror."

Kris Van Assche, Dior's main designer of male clothes, has a more elegant and critical view of modern dandyism (closer to the restrained style of Christian Dior himself before his death in 1957). "Dandyism is often synonymous with preciousness, with mannered self-consciousness," Van Assche says. "This search for an effeminate look, a 'dressing-up' look, is everything that I avoid when I try to create radical, elegant, male fashions."

Real dandyism, Van Assche suggests, is not "outrageous" or "imitative" but "profound and courageous", in search of "radical sophistication and a new, nobility of the soul".

"Courage" and "heroism" are words that frequently occur in discussions of dandyism. M. Dufresne says that it is wrong, on the whole, to portray dandies as limp-wristed, self-regarding fops. To achieve a permanently high level of originality or elegance in male attire requires money, he points out, but it also requires time, care, patience, determination and talent – and a willingness to ignore mockery.

These are all artistic qualities, M. Dufresne says. He hopes that the exhibition will help to re-establish the principle that male attire, not just female, can be a form of art. Oscar Wilde said: "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art."

The exhibition explores the many cross-overs between dandyism and women's fashions; between dandyism and sport; and between dandyism and the cult of youth. Most dandies have a Peter Pan quality. A friend once asked Barbey d'Aurevilly, when in his seventies, whether an old man could be a dandy. He replied: "When I become old, I will let you know." M. Dufresne believes that the modern cult of youth should make dandyism more relevant, and more accepted than ever. "Youthful dressing is now synonymous with jeans but it should not be so," he said. "It is time to reclaim the human leg and the human calf, both male and female, from the tyranny of jeans. My next book will be an examination of different attitudes to the exposure, and the beauty, of the leg over the centuries."

The lives of many celebrated dandies have, however, been miserable or tragic, especially in late middle or old age. George Brummell was ruined and ended his life in a French mental asylum. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned and ended his life in a cheap, Parisian hotel. Can dandies be happy? "Happiness is a banal and rather stupid concept," M. Dufresne said. "If you try to live life to the full, if you have an elevated sensibility, as most dandies do, happiness is always likely to elude you."

The dandy as tragic, artistic hero? You don't have to accept that notion to enjoy the exhibition. In any case, the Dior family house, and its permanent collection of stunning Dior women's fashions from the 1940s and 1950s, make the museum worth a detour this summer.

Christian Dior, the son of a wealthy fertiliser manufacturer, said that he learnt to appreciate beauty, and especially flowers, in his mother's beloved garden at Granville.

Part of the garden was designed by Dior himself. When he created his so-called "New Look" in the 1940s, which relaunched fashion and especially French fashion after the war, Dior said that he wanted to make women "look like flowers".

The Dior garden is the perfect spot to sit and ponder profound questions. Are old trousers and baggy jumpers the best expression of masculinity? Or should men, as well as women, look like works of art?

Is dandyism a solipsistic art form in which the principal audience is the artist, or dandy, himself? Does a dandy, as John Galliano says, "live and sleep in front of a mirror?" Could you trust a man who wears a turquoise bow-tie with fur edging?