Philip Hoare: Dandies of Britain, your country needs you!

The search is on for England's last dandy. Jeremy Millar, the bright new young curator of the Brighton Art Gallery, is combing the archives for images of notable dressers for a major show this autumn at the Brighton Pavilion. It's hard to think of a more suitable place for such a display: George IV's chinoiserie folly slap bang in the middle of London-by-the-sea, still preening itself in the sun even as the modern dandies of the town sashay by. Millar's show, the first of its kind, will include specially commissioned works by the likes of Sam Taylor-Wood. Meanwhile George Walden's recently published Who's A Dandy? – accompanying his translation of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's essay on Beau Brummell, the quintessential English dandy and ornament of his fat friend's seaside palace – has also raised the stakes.

The concept remains a vexed question. Who really is a dandy nowadays? It is telling that we regard the French as so well-dressed, when in the 19th century, Continental dandies ached to emulate their English counterparts, to the extent that Baudelaire even took sandpaper to his new shoes to achieve the authentic English young fogey look (the Victorian equivalent of distressed Diesel jeans, I suppose).

Dandyism produces such paradoxes: the "New Edwardians" of the 1940s adopted their skinny trousers and velvet-collared coats (themselves a hangover of Brummell's times, when the black velvet was an aristocratic token of mourning for the victims of the French Revolution) from the peacock officers of the Guards regiments; and in turn, passed the stylistic baton – through their own love of rough trade and those members of His Majesty's regiments who were willing to sell their favours in Soho pubs and the less frequented byways of Hyde Park – to the Teddy Boys of the 1950s.

So who's in the running now? Certain names come to mind: Brighton's own Stephen Calloway, for instance, V&A curator and a man almost permanently lodged in the fashions of the 1840s, with waxed moustache to match. Our own Peter York is always as immaculately turned out as his vowels. Some might even raise a tentative hand for Nicky Haslam, though I'm not sure that the post-Oasis look really cuts it. I'd vote for the new young comic actor, David Walliams – who has already featured in one of Taylor-Wood's photo pieces – and who wears Vivienne Westwood with aplomb.

When I bumped into George Walden at a recent Radio 3 party (a much more dandified occasion than you might expect, with the elegant Richard Coles reciting an ode to NightWaves, the former MP opined vocally on the dearth, if not the death, of the dandy. Walden dismissed the idea that our age of mass-production could produce a exhibit for Millar's Brighton show. "David Beckham enjoys dressing up," as Walden acknowledges in his book, "but this family man and team-player is too straightforward a fellow to be a dandy in the true sense." Nor is Elton John", he adds for good measure, "whose addiction to dressing up is too extravagant".