In its simplest sense,
"aesthete" means a lover of beauty, but in 19th Century
England the word came to have a more particular meaning. A
literary and artistic movement called aestheticism developed there that
celebrated the pursuit of beauty as the highest good and sought to
overthrow the notion that a work of art had to serve some higher moral
purpose. The practical effect of the movement was to produce men
who were paragons of sophistication and good taste not just in art but
in fashion and interior design. Their sartorial excesses led
English traditionalists to ridicule them as decadent,
effeminate fops.
When Oscar
Wilde, aestheticism's most public champion, was convicted of Gross
Indecency in 1895, aestheticism became so strongly associated with
"unnatural vice." that the movement quickly died. Well into the 20th Century,
"aesthetic" and "artistic" survived as euphemisms
for "homosexual."
