Sometime during the next few weeks, those in France should make a trip out to Granville, the seaside town where Christian Dior once lived in a big pink house on a cliff. His home has since been transformed into the Musée Christian Dior, and the current exhibition, “Dandysmes: 1808-2008” displays silk cravats, David Bowie’s smoking jacket, portraits of dandies on loan from European museums, old manuscripts — like Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s famous dandy manifesto — and dozens of other artifacts created or owned by dandies.

The most interesting aspect of the exhibit is that it goes beyond the historical, making attempts to define “dandyism” today. Dandy purists might argue that metrosexuals, fashion extremists and women can never be dandies, but Vincent Leret, one of the show’s co-curators, said that the dandy’s raison d’être is simply “to be different, proud, brilliant, creative, desperate, with a strong attitude.”

The show displays images of Justin Timberlake, John Galliano’s candy-colored couture, and a photograph of Gisele Bündchen walking the runway in a 1940s-style Dior “Bar” suit for a 2007 couture show. Of course, for the more traditional, literary-minded viewer, there’s plenty of Proust, Wilde and Baudelaire.