Sir Frederick Chook, romantic, fop and author of FrillyShirt, lives in MELBOURNE with his fiancée, Lady Tanah Merah. When not reading Milton and eating stilton, he writes, philosophises, assembles, models and studies history. He spent several years on youth radio and once ran for federal parliament on the anarchist ticket. He is a longhair, aspiring to one day be a greybeard. He has, once or twice, been described as “as mad as a bicycle.”
FrillyShirt is a compilation of articles, essays, reviews, photographs, artworks, question-and-answers, promotions, travelogues, diatribes, spirit journeys, cartoons, ululations and celebrations by Sir Frederick, his friends and contributing readers. Regular features include Teacup in a Storm, an etiquette column, and How to be Lovely, advanced speculations on the aesthetics of the self. Other common topics are politics, environmentalism, fun things happening in Melbourne, art, eccentricities of history and fluffy animals. His favourite philosophers are the German Idealists, the English Romantics and the American Transcendentalists, and his favourite colours are all of them.
Admirers interested in a more comprehensive examination of his tastes and views may refer to his collected Lettres, or submit a question for the FAQ below by telegram.
FREDERICK ANSWERS QUESTIONS.
Why ‘FrillyShirt’? And is your name really ‘Sir Frederick Chook’?
Papers, magazines and journals name themselves for their content, of course; Vogue and Cosmopolitan wish to illustrate their fashionability, while Punch has always celebrated comic bigotry and domestic abuse.
So whither FrillyShirt? Well, a shirt is an intimate thing: it sits close to the skin, to the heart. Ideally, a shirt is comfortable - to wear a hair shirt is a greater challenge than to wear a hair belt buckle. Frillyness is a function of ornamentation, ostentation, unqualified and unashamed. Once you’ve put on a shirt, it more or less stays on - you could take off an indulgent hat to meet your bank manager and put it back on when you’re done, but you couldn’t remove a frilly shirt without stripping off entirely. FrillyShirt, then, implies wearing one’s flamboyancy on one’s sleeve, entirely honestly and expressively, without slavishness to what is proper and socially advantageous.
‘Sir Frederick Chook’ is a nom de plume, simply enough. Writers have always used pen names to express a certain aspect of their identity, something relevant and important to their writing - Voltaire, for example, or Mark Twain, or Flavor Flav. ‘Frederick’ is more ore less the product of chance - it is a nice-sounding name, sort of woody or brassy, and while it in no way upstages my more everyday names, it does summon something of the long-haired wit, no? It also serves as an homage to the vastly underrated German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling.
‘Chook’ is, like me, Australian in origin, but in an incidental rather than an iconic way, possessing a certain absurdity, a subversive silliness to offset the pomp of ‘Frederick’. ‘Sir’ is the title of a baronet. It’s a hereditary title rather than one granted by the state, and so its bearer need exhibit no loyalty to the establishment in order to earn one. However, it is not a peerage, and grants the bearer no special political rights. Rather than seeking to give myself airs above my fellow humans, I declared myself baronet of my imagination, a title implying absolutely nothing about me beyond possession of a title. And an imagination. The fruits of which, you see before you!
“Sir! What was your inspiration for developing Leopard Oil, and is the secret ingredient really Science!?”
I have always had an affinity for the advanced Sciences and Philosophies of the East - knowledgable followers will no doubt have divined this from the luscious designs of my neckties. It was in one of my sojourns to India and the Middle Kingdom that the idea struck me. I had the relevant beast brought to my room at once, and within an hour I had the first experimental jar of Leopard Oil. With the aid of a device I carry with me always, I immediately recognised its qualities of Malleability, Infallibility and Exploitation of Gullibility.
The secret ingredient, should it be revealed to be Science, would no longer be the secret ingredient, and so Science would no longer be the secret ingredient, and so the secret ingredient would be a secret known to none - which shows to us that Science is everywhere.
“Surely you are simply a dandy?”
Perhaps… but I wouldn’t say so. The great spokesdandies of history are a bit of a sorry lot - Brummell, a syphillitic society snob; Baudelaire, a nasty little misogynist; and a handful of genuine Fascists. Their style is restrained and masculine, their ethos is Brummell’s “if John Bull turns to look after you, you are not well-dressed.” Well, Byron’s counter is “even good men like to make the public stare” and that suits me just fine. Everyday life should be a celebration, and that’s how I dress - celebratory, luxurious, feminine and masculine harmoniously balanced, unafraid of causing a stir - sometimes a stir is exactly what is needed to let people start celebrating their own beauty as well.
“Tesla or Daguerre? Discuss.”
Ah, an excellent question - two geniuses from very different ages. Daguerre changed our very conception of pictorial representation and, indeed, wholly revolutionised both art and the practice of documentation. But then, Tesla could shoot down airships with bolts of raw power from his hands. In a way, we are equally indebted to both of them.
THE AUTHOR’S BANNERKAMMER, or, CHAMBER OF WONDERFUL BANNERS
