The historical figure of the dandy has commonly been described as an upper-class gentleman. But there is a broader history to be told about the dandy—one that incorporates unknown men from the lower strata of society.

The Dandy: A People's History constitutes the first history of those dandies who emanated from the less privileged layers of the populace—the lowly clerks, shop assistants, domestic servants, and laborers who increasingly during the modern age have emerged as style-conscious men about town.

A series of fascinating in-depth studies of the wide variety of dandy subcultures that have surfaced around the world in the last two centuries tell the story of how the shaping of fashions and the image of men became increasingly democratized, with the arbiters of taste increasingly coming from the other end of the social spectrum. We encounter such long-forgotten groups as the mashers, the knuts, the Paris gandins and the Berlin transgender dandies, alongside unexplored figures like the zoot suiter, the teddy boy, and the New Romantic.

This is a story of how fundamental aspects of modern culture such as fashion, style, and conduct have been shaped from below just as much as from above.