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Beau Brummell, né George Bryan Brummell (June 7, 1778, London, U.K.–March 30, 1840, Caen, France), was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent. He established the mode of men wearing understated, but fitted, beautifully cut clothes, adorned with an elaborately-knotted cravat.^[1]

Beau Brummell is credited^{[citation needed]} with introducing and establishing as fashion the modern man's suit, worn with a tie. He claimed five hours to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne.^[2] To wit, his style of dress was known as dandyism.^[3]

In 1794, Brummell was an undergraduate at Oriel College, and later embarked upon a military career, but resigned his commission and abandoned it when his cavalry regiment was ordered quartered to Manchester.

Brummell's downfall was caused by a falling-out with the Prince of Wales;^[4] provoked by his infamous remark, Alvanley, who's your fat friend? (about Prince George, who had earlier snubbed him in a fit of flightiness); it doomed his social prominence in that it removed the Regent's social umbrella that had protected him from creditors and the like. In 1816, he fled to France to escape social ostracism and the sudden demand for payment in full of thousands of pounds sterling owed.^[5] He lived the remainder of his life in France, and died penniless and insane from syphilis in Caen in 1840.

Brummell appears as a character in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1896 historical novel Rodney Stone. In the novel, the title character's uncle, Charles Tregellis, is the center of the London fashion world, until Brummell ultimately supplants him. Tregellis' subsequent death from mortification serves as a deus ex machina in that it resolves Rodney Stone's family poverty, as his rich uncle bequeaths a sum to his sister.

Brummell's life was later dramatised in

• an 1890 stage play by American playwright Clyde Fitch;
• a 1924 movie with John Barrymore and Mary Astor;
• a 1937 production on Lux Radio Theater with Robert Montgomery as Brummell and Gene Lockhart as the Prince; (during the introduction of this episode, Cecil B. DeMille calls for prayers for finding Amelia Earhart);
• a 1954 movie remake, Beau Brummell, with Stewart Granger playing the title role;^[6]in this film the rape of Lady Patricia is played as romantic; if violent lovemaking.
• A 2006 BBC television drama, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man starring James Purefoy as Brummell, and first broadcast on BBC Four in June 2006.^[7]

Georgette Heyer, author of a number of Regency romance novels, included a character named after Brummell in her 1935 novel Regency Buck.

Watchmaker LeCoultre made a watch named after him during the 1940s and 1950s. It is an extremely simple watch with no numbers and a small modern face.

Brummell's name was adopted by the faux-British Invasion band The Beau Brummels who had top 40 hit records in 1965.

Brummell's name was also used by an English group, Beau Brummell Esquire and His Noble Men, who released at least one single, "I Know, Know, Know" b/w "Shopping Around" (Columbia DB 7447), in 1965. The "A side" song was written by Beau Brummell Esquire; the "B side" song is credited to Tepper-Bennett-Schroeder, a trio of professional song writers who had previously written hits for Cliff Richard.

Brummell is the detective-hero of a series of period mysteries by Rosemary Stevens, including Death on a Silver Tray (2000), The Tainted Snuff Box (2001), The Bloodied Cravat (2002), and Murder in the Pleasure Gardens (2003).

A statue of Brummell by Irena Sedlecka was erected on London's Jermyn Street in 2002.^[8]

Once my clothes were shabby. Tailors called me "cabbie." So I took a vow, Said, "This bum'll be Beau Brummell. Stephen Sondheim, in Gypsy (1959)

T. S. Eliot mentioned him in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (which Andrew Lloyd Webber later made into the hit Broadway musical Cats) in his poem about Bustopher Jones: "In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names / Is the name of this Brummell of cats."

French novelist Honoré de Balzac, in his Traité de la vie élégante (1830s), depicts an aging, wig-wearing and somewhat overweight Brummell discussing fashion and defining the "elegant" lifestyle with the French.

He also is affectionately remembered by Little Orphan Annie in the Broadway musical Annie (1977), wherein she refers to his keen sense of fashion: "Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly, they stand out a mile ... you're never fully dressed without a smile".

From singer-songwriter Billy Joel's "Glass Houses" album (1980), the listener is told in the hit "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" that "you could really be a Beau Brummell, baby, if you just give it half a chance".

Novelist Virginia Woolf gave a talk on Beau Brummel for the BBC on 20 November, 1929.

In the television series Doctor Who, a 1984 episode entitled "The Twin Dilemma" featured a recently regenerated Sixth Doctor, who, upon choosing his clothes and being told he "looks dreadful", retorts: "That, my dear, is what they said about Beau Brummell." In the 1964 episode entitled "The Sensorites," the First Doctor, upon being given a cloak to wear, remarks that "Beau Brummell always said I looked better in a cloak."

In his autobiography, And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, Charlie Rangel mentions that when his grandfather dressed up he looked like Beau Brummell.

In one of the earlier Garfield cartoons, Jon asks Lyman for help deciding which outfit to wear. Lyman enters the panel very flamboyantly dressed, to which Garfield opines; "Beau Brummell lives."

• Campbell, Kathleen. Beau Brummell. London: Hammond, 1948
• Jesse, Captain William. The Life of Beau Brummell. London: The Navarre Society Limited, 1927.
• Kelly, Ian. Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style. Hodder & Stoughton, 2005
• Lewis, Melville. Beau Brummell: His Life and Letters. New York: Doran, 1925
• Moers, Ellen. The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. London: Secker and Warburg, 1960.
• Nicolay, Claire. Origins and Reception of Regency Dandyism: Brummell to Baudelaire. Ph. D. diss., Loyola U of Chicago, 1998.
• Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.