Dimitri Arvanitis Graduate collection. Photo: Lee Wei Swee. Model: Bruce M. @ Dominique Models Make-up: Tom Vandewalle
Dude looks like a lady – but remains a man. How contemporary fashion is tracking the changing form of masculinity for the age of gender pluralism.
Essay by Celina Plag
Pay any attention to the fashion visions that designers have been sending down the catwalk recently, and you are likely to have stumbled across a phenomenon connecting many contemporary men’s collections. It’s hard to miss. It’s not the colours, the cut, or even materials. It has nothing to do with technical accomplishment. Rather, it is a fundamental trend that may well lead to a paradigm shift in men’s clothing: a diverse use of fashion references, all of which clearly originate in women’s fashion.
Sometimes, silky flowing fabrics make their way into men’s wardrobes, in mille fleur, or otherwise knee-length blouses or dresses with refined punched-out ornaments, such as those from British design duo Meadham Kirchhoff. Elsewhere there are ultra-short, mirror-like shift dresses like those of the young Beijing designer Xander Zhou, which are worn over even tighter shorts and high-necked blouses. Plenty of fur is also in evidence. For Les Hommes, it’s all about the glittering fibres, body-loving cuts and patent leather boots. And every now and then there are even iridescent glitter dresses à la Walter van Beirendonck, turned especially chic with baroque ladylike overskirts. As different as all these style elements may be, they all share one characteristic: their originally feminine provenance.
If it’s true that fashion is a mirror of society, then a men’s fashion that is increasingly female will inevitably lead to conclusions about the men who wear it. It’s not difficult to claim that the role of the man in public is undergoing change.
Back in the 1980s and early 1990s there was an even bigger wave of femininity that spilled over into men’s fashion. Inspired by anti-conformist subcultures and the louder demands from the gay rights movement, labels such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Thierry Mugler attempted to challenge the prevailing idea of the modern man, one that dated back to the Industrial Revolution. Fashion’s dominating, disembodied suit was to be exchanged for their androgynous designs à la David Bowie.
When it was time for a softer masculinity in the wake of the model of overbearing physicality, their ideas remained in the main devoted to anti-fashion. It could be because their designs had a big, showy character that they often resembled a masquerade: the man became a woman in a skirt. Fashion seemed to follow the principles of travesty (the word is usually used as a pejorative today, but its roots are in the theatre technique of a role played by a performer of the opposite gender). Avant-garde labels of the time, like Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons, had more opportunities. Their style of body-deconstructive unisexes played on prevailing gender roles, as they at least tried to abolish propagated traditional boundaries through immateriality.
But what’s happening today isn’t merely parody or immateriality. Young designers are offering tailor-fitted menswear that presents the male body in an erotic way. Women have worn men’s clothes for years, but looking back on decades of boyfriend jeans, jackets and sweaters, the “Girlfriend Look” now seems sure to follow. What does it mean for men and fashion?