Links
The magazine that started it all.
The "chat room" set up as an adjunct to The Chap and the original Sheridan Club's corporeal meetings. Highly sophisticated and extremely full of words nowadays. You could spend the rest of your life there and still never catch up with all the bon mots that have been lobbed about since its inception in October 2004.
Clubs, Fora and Resources:
Official website of La Sociˇtˇ des Fl‰neurs Sans Fronti¸res (Liverpool chapter), decribing itself as "an Open Forum for Anarcho-Absurdists, Revolutionary Sybarites, Alchemical Hazardistas and Urban Arcadians everywhere". Full of general flanerie but specifically aims to provide an idiosyncratic guide to the cultural and artistic side of life in north west England. Home to the breath-taking, death-defying Great British Insult Generator:
Website of The Enthusiast, a splendid, if somewhat erratically produced, "non-literary literary" magazine.
HQ for the Geovictwardian movement. The name comes from "Georgian", "Victorian" and "Edwardian", three eras from which the movement seeks to draw its inspiration. Dedicated to elegant dressing, noble living and good manners. They seek to be "true gentlemen without the foppishness". (Nothing wrong with a bit of foppisness, if you ask me, but there you go.) Attendees at chappist events may have seen Albion, the group's leader, strutting around, usually in a white pith helmet.
Website for The Last Tuesday Society, which holds meetings in London at which interesting guests speak. At time of writing it doesn't look as if it's been updated for five months, but if you join the mailing list you'll get e-missives about forthcoming events (usually about five minutes before they take place, but you can't have everything). Co-organised by David Piper, also one to the eminence gris behind the Modern Times Club, although I gather this latter organisation will be taking a holiday for a while.
Dedicated to recreating the 1920s-1940s nightclub experience, the What What Club's evenings are filled with folk in vintage dress, dancing to live swing bands.
Home of the International Club, which does the same sort of thing as the What What Club.
An online magazine about, unsurprisingly, dandyism. Erudite, articulate, somewhat cynical and proudly opinionated.
Foppish den of-and self-built shrine to-Lord Peter Whimsy, "mammal of paradise" and "affected provincial". It is a warm, safe and sunny place.
The Handlebar Club has been going since 1947 and is for men with handlebar moustaches. At the site you'll find various moustache-related news and advice.
www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com
As its name suggests, this site concerns itself with tea and biscuits and the joys of relaxing with them, with side ventures into cakes and pies. There is a Biscuit of the Week and important news (such as the axing of the plain chocolate hobnob).
Describing itself as "notes on life, love, drink, debauchery, fisticuffs and fine tailoring", this site offers the opportunity essentially to eavesdrop on a transatlantic correspondence between, well, two chaps. They seem torn between the Chappist and the Laddist but perhaps that is the Modern Way.
Not unlike an American version of the Sheridan Club forum, but with a particular obsession with clothing (there's a clue in the name). Here folk will post photographs of some recently acquired collar bars or a hat creased in seven different ways, with no further explanation required.
www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com
Website of a slick magazine that has been glorifying alcohol
abuse for ten years now. Aside from this it is not especially Chappist, though
the imagery has a pleasingly Forties tone.
Somewhat baggy collection of observations, links and dictats on such things as cocktails, menswear and the like. The man behind it has the godlike status of being the co-author of The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie. He is a physicist and in addition to tie knot analysis he also brings his mighty maths brain to the business of urinal selection.
A suitably grey site. While NSC members won't share the DMC's desire to avoid excitement at all costs, this site does nevertheless dedicate itself to enjoying simple pleasures, "free from pressures to be 'in' or trendy", something we can all appreciate. Here you can discover the joys of collecting sand or listening to a metronome, read an impressively thorough guide to the world's airport luggage carousels (with notes on which direction they turn) and tune in to a webcam that is watching a cheddar cheese mature.
Well worth a visit for those interested in absinthe (and let's face it, who isn't?). Run by some laudably dedicated Americans (given that it is still illegal to sell absinthe in their country and they must have all their samples sent from Europe), it is a forum for enthusiasts. They don't sell anything but do have a buyer's guide featuring reviews posted by members. Given the huge number of absinthes suddenly on sale and the high price tag that even the cheaper ones demand, this sort of information is very handy.
Home of the Tiger Rag Club, describing itself as "the hottest night club this side of 1935". Lots of period music spun on wind-up gramophones. Behind it all are the Tiger Rag Collective, who use their respective disciplines of music, dance and design to bring the glorious 1930s back to life. The only problem with the club is that it is in deepest Suffolk, but their site does include details of B&Bs so you can stay over.
Difficult to know what to make of this lot, the 18th Century Club, so I'll leave it to you. The website's quite amusing but, given the level of potty-mouthedness and the photograph of them all with but one tie between them, one might be inclined to keep an eyebrow cocked. (Mind you, in fairness, it's all quite true to the age, I suppose.)
A Chappist bicycling club, by any other name. "For today's cyclist, " they wisely observe, "skin tight lycra may promise a reduction in wind resistance but also in decorum. A reflective yellow vest guarantees high visibility, but who would wish to be seen in such a garment?" Quite.
If you ever get a chance to see the Insect Circus' travelling museum then grasp it firmly. It tends to tour around festivals and the like. Inside this converted lorry is a lovingly constructed museum of an imagined heyday of circuses involving giant insects. The period styling and layered humour are top notch. Nowadays they also have a live show in which real acrobats dress up as insects, but this is rather missing the point, I think. Better the suggestion of the painted postcards, ephemera and artefacts such as the six-armed ant uniform, ring master's whip and the "actual" bass drum as featured on the cover of the album Captain Cicadella's Insect Circus Band (by the all-insect pop group, The Peaple, ho ho).
A noble relaunching of the club that has had many guises since the 18th century, its emphasis sometimes literary, sometimes theatrical, but always celebrating the eccentric. There's quite a charitable element too.
Forum dedicated to sartorial elegance. Hurrah!
Purveyors of Fine and
Interesting Things:
James Lock & Co. established this business in 1676 to
serve the court of St James (St James's St was just a muddy track then) and
have been serving the royal and the famous ever since. Their speciality is the
fitting of hard felts to your exact head shape though they also sell a wide
range of soft felts, tweed hats, panamas, flying helmets, pith helmets, smoking
caps, etc, including a range of ladies' titfers. They are not cheap, but I
suppose one pays a premium for shopping at a place that once safely received a
postcard addressed simply, "The Best Hatters in the World, London".
Catherine Darcy's Lewes-based emporium is mainly aimed at supplying thesps with costumes, but she is also very willing to supply Chaps with hard-to-find items such as stiff collars in a variety of styles, shirts with spear-point soft collars and collar clips.
The wonderful people at Old Town make new clothes to old designs, usually based on specific vintage garments found stuffed behind a radiator somewhere and forgotten for a hundred years. They do not make to measure but they make to order so you can choose your fabric from their range or even supply your own.
An interesting online bespoke tailoring concept: you measure yourself following their instructions and enter the details on the website. Then they have the clothes made up in India. Service has been rather slow of late, but they say they have new suppliers and are back up to speed. For the money the quality is remarkably good.
The same concept as Blackstone-Lewis, though a bit cheaper. Although they don't expressly say so (unlike Blackstone-Lewis) they will make adjustments to garments until you are happy. (I made them redo a waistcoat four times and they didn't stab me in the eye or anything.)
For all your absinthe needs-and if your needs are considerable and ravenous, fear not: these coves offer over 70 brands of the green stuff. (Actually, some of the Swiss ones are blue.) The company also owns the splendid La Fˇe brand, arguably responsible for the resurgence of interest in the drink here.
These venerable barbers have two shops in London and you can also buy their fine range of shaving products at this site.
Why not make shaving the opulent ritual it deserves to be? These people fashion some very tasty razors, shaving brushes, et al. You can't buy at the site but you will be directed to somewhere where you can.
A trifle garish and modern, this site may just be of interest if you are after 1940s or 1950s style undergarments. At the time of writing they have a consignment of genuine Second World War underpants.
A purveyor of fine vintage wear for women, including jewels, hats, shoes, etc. Victoria Robinson's emporium is, geographically speaking, in Ireland but, thanks to the wonder of the World Wide Web, you can shop with her aetherially. She says she also has some gentlemen's evening wear and smoking jackets, though these do not appear on the site, so you might have to contact her directly.
If you mourn the demise of our telegram system, rejoice. Thanks to these coves you can still send one-and a dashed handsome one at that. For £10 they will put together a pleasingly old-fashioned looking object, complete with vintage stamps, with your message typed out and pasted on. Of course your recipient actually receives it via Royal Mail, but it looks the part.
Sophie, who goes by other identities too (lets just say you'll never see her in the same room as Miss Tenacity Flux), is a forger of fine corsetry, jewellery, bridal gowns, that sort of thing. As she says herself, "I'm not cheap but I'm good." What more could one wish to have on one's tombstone?
Albion is the man behind the Geovictwardian movement (see above) and he has now opened a shop selling all manner of victuals and beverages from the British Isles. The premises are in the heart of London's Covent Garden district and he also runs a mail order hamper operation from the basement, presumably to send out parcels to stout coves if far-flung corners of the Empire who would appreciate a reminder of the civilities of home.