Don't You Ever Stop Being Dandy: In Memory of Bunny Roger

Bunny Roger by Francis Goodman (1951)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Neil Roger - known by friend and foe alike as Bunny - was a couturier, war hero, and what the Victorians would have politely termed a confirmed bachelor. A man loved within fashionable society as much for his kindness as his impeccable (sometimes flamboyant) style.

It's said that everybody's favourite fictional dandy, John Steed - played so beautifully by Patrick Macnee - was partly based on Bunny and his neo-Edwardian wardrobe that featured long tight-waisted jackets, narrow trousers and a high-crowned bowler hat. His exquisitely cut suits showed Savile Row tailoring at its very finest.

As a boy, his Scottish parents sent him to an independent boarding school in East Lothian. Founded in 1827, Loretto School is currently under investigation as part of an inquiry into historic child abuse. Bunny then spent a year reading history at Balliol College, before deciding to study drawing at the Ruskin, having determined on a career designing clothes.

The Oxford authorities had their eye on him, however, and he was eventually expelled from the University, accused of homosexual activities. The fact that he enhanced his good looks with rouge and hair dye didn't help his case (though I don't know if he even attempted to mount a defence against the charges made: Never complain, never explain).

In 1937, aged twenty-six, Bunny established himself as a London couturier who could name Vivien Leigh and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent among his clientele. His shop, in Great Newport Street, was decorated in camp Regency Gothic style. Unfortunately, his career as a dress-maker to the rich and famous was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Serving as a commissioned officer in the Rifle Brigade, Bunny saw action in Italy and North Africa. He was greatly admired by his fellow soldiers for his courage under fire - and for the fact that even in the most demanding of circumstances he always made sure his makeup was carefully applied with a showman's resilience and went into battle wearing a mauve chiffon scarf, brandishing the latest copy of Vogue.  
       
Following the War, Bunny was invited to run the couture department at the exclusive West End store Fortnum and Mason. He seemed to enjoy his job. And he certainly enjoyed his colourful social life, holding lavish and often outrageous parties for his many friends and specially invited guests, until his death in 1997, aged 85.

Indeed, party-giving was arguably Bunny's true vocation; he had a great passion (and talent) for dancing, dressing up, and entertaining. One notorious fetish-themed party in 1956 even provoked tabloid headlines.   

In an obituary published in the Independent (28 April 1997), Clive Fisher closes with the following rather touching paragraph:

"All dandies need an audience, but Bunny Roger inspired what almost amounted to a following - partly because by word and deed he never stopped entertaining; partly because we are all nostalgic for style. Most crucially, however, he was true: beneath his mauve mannerisms he was stalwart, frank, dependable and undeceived; to onlookers a passing peacock, to intimates a life enhancer and exemplary friend."

Only the puritans of Dandyism.net seem unable to resist casting aspersions upon his character ...

For Bunny, they insist, was not a prominent figure within the history of dandyism; just an old school queen too prone to wearing sequins and rightly regarded as a marginal character. Indeed, all that saved him from being "just another flaunting, excessively camp clown like Patrick McDonald", was his Edwardian-infused sobriety and "genuinely good taste in conventional attire".

Unfortunately, nothing saves the Junta - as the staff of Dandyism.net like to refer to themselves - from lapsing on this occasion into ill-mannered homophobia.


Notes

Clive Fisher's obituary for Bunny Roger can be read in full by clicking here.

The Dandyism.net editorial (14 Nov 2007) can be read by clicking here.

The Charm of Kink (with Reference to the Case of Mrs. Peel)

The charm of kink is that it has charm. And the nature of this appealing quality is camp.

In other words, whilst it would be wrong to set up a false dichotomy and seek to salvage kink from a more problematically perverse aesthetic with origins deep in the pornographic imagination, it is certainly more playful than pathological; a kind of frivolous form of fetishism in which stylization and mannerism matters far more than actual sexual activity. 

The kinky individual delights in props, costumes, and role playing as pleasures in their own right and not simply as methods of enhancing orgasm and camp perversity is ultimately more about fashion, fun, and theatre than fucking in dreadful earnest which, if it does take place, does so off-stage, as all forms of obscenity should. It relies upon (and is happier with) suggestiveness rather than anything overt; a sophisticated and teasing combination of imagination, irony and innuendo.  

This is perfectly illustrated by the case of Mrs. Peel, played by Diana Rigg in sixties spy-fi series The Avengers. Mrs. Peel is the personification of kinky charm and English cool, whether she's wearing her trademark leather catsuit, fancy dress, or groovy get-ups created by John Bates and, later, Alun Hughes, to emphasise her youthful, contemporary character.    

Perhaps her most notorious outfit was the Queen of Sin costume, worn in the most viewed and much discussed episode entitled 'A Touch of Brimstone'.

As can be seen in the photo accompanying this text, the Queen of Sin costume consists of a black embroidered corset laced tightly at the back and cut straight across the breast. The corset comes with a barely-there, see-through black lace micro-mini that just about reaches the top of her naked thighs and fails to conceal the black satin high-cut bikini briefs worn beneath. The look is complemented with a spiked leather collar (complete with leash), evening gloves, stiletto heeled boots (also back-lacing) and, somewhat lamely, a live snake.     

For many fans of the show, the moment that Mrs. Peel strips away a long black cloak and stands revealed in her Queen of Sin costume constitutes a real highpoint or kinky consummation of some kind. It certainly makes Steed's eyes - and one suspects not just his eyes - bulge with surprise and delight.

But for me, as for the censors at the time, with its explicit visual references to the world of BDSM, 'A Touch of Brimstone' goes too far; the cat is let out of the bag so to speak. I prefer Mrs. Peel kept under wraps and think she is at her most seductive when she manages to combine the perverse with the prim and proper; the deviant with the demure.

Notes

'A Touch of Brimstone', episode 21 of series 4 of The Avengers, written by Brian Clemens and directed by James Hill, was first shown (with cuts) in the UK in February 1966. It was deemed unsuitable for broadcast in the US. As well as starring Patrick Macnee as Steed and Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel, it also co-starred Peter Wyngarde as The Honourable John Cleverly Cartney, the camp libertine and aristocratic anarchist who is the villain of the piece.

Those who are interested may care to go to the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmxe3ueE9jU