Editorial Journal of John Cooper on Oscar Wilde
Last Chance to View Lecture
Oscar Wilde on Dress by John Cooper
If you missed my Dress Lecture given on December 6 or wish to view it again (!) the Victorian Society in America has extended availability until January 3, 2026.
Continue reading “Fashion Statement”
Oscar Wilde on Dress
by John Cooper
DATE: Saturday, December 6 at 2pm EST
(Eastern Standard Time in the US is five hours behind GMT)
Click here to Register: Zoom Webinar.
Welcome to the sixth season of online lectures presented by the Victorian Society in America inspired by their internationally-acclaimed Summer Schools.
This season’s speakers will address a wide variety of subjects including Los Angeles in the Victorian era, the evolution of resort architecture, Oscar Wilde’s philosophy on dress and fashion, a behind-the-scenes look at the preservation of Gilded Age Newport, the Saturday Evening Girls’ club and the Paul Revere Pottery, and the work of British preservationist and architectural historian Gavin Stamp.
Continue reading “Dress Lecture”
Late Victorians began to contemplate a bold, astonishing idea: that perhaps women might simply be free to dress… freely.
Oscar Wilde On Dress
Now in a New Updated and Expanded Artisan Edition.
www.oscarwildeondress.com
Back in 2012 I rediscovered Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Philosophy of Dress” and published it the following year in a limited hardback bibliophile edition. That publication represented the essay’s first appearance in book form, and the first posthumous release of a lost work by Wilde.
I am now pleased to introduce the book in an updated and expanded softcover artisan edition.
Continue reading “On Dress”
“No man in modern times has dared to dress as he pleased, except Oscar Wilde…”
The commentary below appeared in a fashion issue of Life magazine in 1916. It is styled as the “manly confession” of a sentiment still so unmanly that its exemplar was Oscar Wilde, sixteen years after his death.
Unsurprisingly, it appeared above an amusingly transparent pseudonym in keeping with the light-hearted tone of the magazine.
And yet, given its reference to the “craven hisses” that greeted Wilde’s demise and the condemnation of cowardice, I suspect a little earnest belief lay hidden in plain sight.
Continue reading “A Manly Confession”
It has long been assumed that all of the 1882 photographs of Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony were taken during the same visit to his studio. Indeed, in all of Wilde studies there does not appear to be any record of an assertion to the contrary.
However, there is a convincing case to be made that the LAST FOUR photographs were taken at a later date.
—Corroborating Research—
In a recent article I established the literary source for the cello coat worn by Oscar Wilde at the Grosvenor Gallery. However, I left it open to interpretation whether Wilde actually did have such a coat tailored or, perhaps, he just happened to have one like it. After all, ask you may recall, there was only one report of the “cello” shape.
However, we can now be definitive.
Further research allows us to make the coat story complete—although, as we shall see, the archaic variant word compleat might make for a better fit.
Continue reading “Cello Encore”For the 2025 Softcover Edition see:
https://www.oscarwilde.us/dress/the-book.html
Limited Bibliophile Edition | Ebook
http://www.oscarwildeondress.com
SOLD OUT
It is rare that an important contribution by a major author goes unrecorded. Rarer still if the author is Oscar Wilde, the famous poet, writer, dramatist, and much quoted wit, who has been the subject of continual interest and analysis since his death in 1900. But such has been the fate of his 1885 essay The Philosophy Of Dress.
This work now forms the centerpiece of a unique collection of Wilde’s writings on dress and fashion. In the book, in addition to the essay, there are generously annotated and illustrated chapters that analyze the importance of dress to Wilde’s writing career, and a comprehensive review of the influences, trends, characters, and source material that informed his dress philosophy. As a compendium this book includes several period articles and letters by Wilde on dress and fashion, along with related, but rarely published, correspondence.
This first printing of the First Edition is limited to 99 copies and has sold out.
For the 2025 Softcover Edition see:
https://www.oscarwilde.us/dress/the-book.html
To accompany the world premiere of the Morrison/Cox opera Oscar in Santa Fe, NM, this adapted excerpt from my book Oscar Wilde On Dress appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican’s arts magazine Pasatiempo.
For more on Wilde and dress see:
https://www.oscarwilde.us/dress/the-book.html
© John Cooper, 2014.