Is it better to be as poncy as a peacock or as sober as an accountant? A careful dresser or a complete slob? Does it actually make a difference what clothes you wear — aren’t blokes supposed to be above such things? Is it a bit too gay to wear brightly coloured clothes? Is minimalism chic? These are the sort of questions I am often asked in the course of my demanding work as the nation’s top style commentator. And the thing I always reply to people who keep accosting me with their tiresome questions is: “Don’t ask me! Ask Beau Brummell. He’s the man with the answer for everything.”

And he is, too. When we think of Brummell today, we probably imagine him as a foppish, flamboyant character with rouged cheeks, a beauty spot and frilly lace sleeves, saying such waggish things as (to the Prince Regent’s companion): “Who’s your fat friend?” and (when asked if he ate vegetables): “I believe I may once have eaten a pea.” But as Ian Kelly reminds us in his hugely readable new book, Beau Brummell — The Ultimate Dandy, the real Brummell was hardly like that at all.

The bit about him being a wit is accurate; that’s how he managed to become such great mates with royalty. But as for his dress sense, the opposite is true. Brummell was a dandy in the original sense of the word: a fastidiously correct dresser, rather than a fancy-pants show-off. “The original dandy didn’t ever want to see colour, to dazzle,” says Kelly. “Brummell would have been appalled to be lumped with peacockery.”

What Brummell had to say about how to dress in the 1800s still makes a lot of sense. One of his great sayings was: “If John Bull turns around to look after you, you are not well-dressed; but either too stiff, too tight or too fashionable.” This was, of course, slightly disingenuous coming from a man so famous for what he wore that spectators would turn up just to watch him get dressed. But the point was well made. Overdressing isn’t big and it isn’t clever. Just look at the effect it has had on Elton John.

If Brummell’s style was considered shocking at the time, says Kelly, it’s because it jarred so greatly with the contemporary trend, led by the Prince of Wales, for voluminous silks, bright colours, jewellery and suchlike. Brummell’s aesthetic, by contrast, was “less is more”. He limited his wardrobe almost exclusively to three colours: white, buff and blue-black. He valued precision and fine-tailoring but not flashiness. His ideal outfit was one that did “not speak beyond the owner”.

His influence is still with us today. Brummell was the key figure in what fashion historians call “The Great Masculine Renunciation”, the pivotal moment when men stopped trying to out-pretty girls and dressed in clothes that accentuated their maleness. The white shirt, the tie and the clean, flattering lines of the modern suit are direct descendants of the look that Brummell pioneered, a look designed mainly to enhance the beauty of the male form.

Hence men’s continuing obsession with nuance and fine tailoring. A good tailor exaggerates the more desirable parts of the anatomy — padding the chest and shoulders, for example — while disguising such things as pot bellies. As for the nuance part, clearly, if all men are starting to dress in much the same way, as they did post-Brummell, tiny distinguishing details of cloth and cut and stitching become more important.

So who are Brummell’s 21st-century heirs? Who are the modern dandies? I consulted Kelly and was surprised by some of his choices (Bob Geldof?!). But the problem, he says, is down to the different possible interpretations of dandyism. He thinks that Geldof qualifies because when he dresses up in one of his three-piece tweed suits he is doing something similar to what Brummell did — “referencing and acknowledging the fact that he is part of the Establishment while simultaneously expressing a wry and amused disdain for it”.

Ian Kelly's top 10 modern dandies

Bob Geldof.

Jack White from the White Stripes (“that ‘Is she his wife or is she his sister?’ sexual ambiguity thing is very dandy”)

Andre Benjamin from Outkast ( “fastidious and showy”)

Tom Ford

Karl Lagerfeld

Steven Berkoff (“understated but interesting”)

Jeremy Irons

Alex Jennings (“very English”)

Jean-Christophe Novelli and Giorgio Locatelli (“chefs often make the best dandies because of that tension between their need for self- promotion and their need to work within the strictures of tradition”)

You’ll notice that there are no sportsmen on the list. This is because Ian Kelly, as befits a man of culture, has not heard of any of them

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