Evander Berry Wall was a New York City socialite and later an American expatriate in France during the Belle Époque and beyond. He was famous for his extravagantly refined look and was crowned "King of the Dudes" in the 1880s.
Wall was known as the "King of the Dudes" at the time of the "Battle of the Dudes"
Berry Wall caricatured in The New York Times (1902), wearing one of his "extraordinary costumes".
Berry Wall (right) in Paris in the 1920s with his chow chow Chi-Chi
Dude is American slang for an individual, typically male. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a male person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner or a conspicuous citified person who was visiting a rural location, a "city slicker". In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean any male person, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s. Current slang retains at least some use of all three of these common meanings.
Evander Berry Wall, a New York socialite, was dubbed "King of the Dudes". He is pictured (1888) in the New York American newspaper at the time of the "battle of the Dudes".
Among the first published descriptions defining "dude"; Chicago Tribune, 25 February 1883
