Courtesy of @nensidojaka.
Underwear has never just been about practicality; it has always been radically meaningful. If the body is a battleground, as Barbara Kruger famously postulated, underwear is a weapon. For centuries, in the Western world and beyond, underwear has signified complex entanglements between shame, desire, beauty and appropriateness. Whether it is revealing or concealing, embellished or plain, pushes up or pulls in, underwear has been a means to comment on social taboos and gender stereotypes for centuries. In 2019, underwear as a cultural document is more important than ever—this past year or so has seen the crisis of Victoria’s Secret and the cancellation of its fashion show amid slowing sales, the much-publicised launch of Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty collection, the scandal around Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS shapewear (initially conceived as “Kimono”) and the self-assertive re-do of luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, who are now rebranding as female-gaze friendly.
Now, as ever, the story is about body politics and gender. As we increasingly live in an age where gender is being questioned and reinterpreted as fluid, multiple and unfixed, underwear is similarly being questioned and reinterpreted as a symbol for people of non-traditional and non-binary genders and sexualities, as well as a tool to challenge stereotypes about femininity and masculinity, and reevaluate our attitudes toward different body types. In comparison to the lingerie lines of yore, contemporary brands are choosing to promote self-acceptance, liberated versions of sexuality, and finding pleasure in one’s body—as was epitomised by Charlotte Wales and Ursina Gysi’s buoyantly sexy, female-oriented campaigns for Agent Provocateur, or Savage X Fenty’s disruptive, for women and made by women, extravaganza. The male labels are catching up with the times, too, “turning away from old notions of square-jawed masculinity”, as Tiffany Hsu remarked in terms of on how underwear brands for men (like Hanes with their body-positive “Every Bod” campaign) have learned to embrace sentimentality and self-humour. At the same time, with more options in trans underwear (a recent The New York Times article traced the surge in labels who offer underwear specifically and only for trans people, such as Carmen Liu Lingerie), and a stronger emphasis on inclusivity, the underwear market is becoming more diverse and experimental.
Left: Courtesy of @christopherkane. Right: Courtesy of @savagexfenty.
And not only that: contemporary underwear claims the right to be visible. With its newly found focus on celebrating the body whatever its shape and size instead of restricting it, underwear is no longer just to be hidden under layers of clothes: it should be taken pride in and flaunted. Unsurprisingly, then, underwear-inspired fashion has emerged as a major trend at recent fashion weeks with brands including Gucci, Mugler and Christopher Kane including semi-sheer, featherweight, underslip-like dresses in their SS20 collections; elsewhere bras were worn as tops on Burberry’s and Tom Ford’s catwalks. Nothing new, one might retort: the 1990s were just as underwear-obsessed what with Thierry Mugler’s and Helmut Lang’s legendary designs. And yet, something is new.
To understand what has changed exactly, it’s worth taking a look at young avant garde designers who are drawing inspiration from underwear, such as Charlotte Knowles, Nensi Dojaka, the Taiwan-based Chin Yu Wang, or the currently “it” Di Du, whose garments often riff on bras and corsets. Knowles, who debuted her brand in 2017, explained her target customer as such: “She’s definitely very bold. And there’s also an element of her that’s a bit like trashy—Prada-meets-Love Island. She’s very open with her sexuality and doesn’t give a f*ck if people judge her for it. She’s kind of the girl that I aspire to be, but I’m definitely not her.” With her deconstructed designs that are beautiful and grotesque, sexy and ugly at the same time, Knowles proposes a complex reading of female sexuality, reminding how multifaceted, multi-dimensional, weird and even unnecessary to define it is.
Left: Courtesy of @charlotteknowleslondon. Right: Courtesy of @nensidojaka.
Similarly, Nensi Dojaka, a recent Central Saint Martins graduate, draws inspiration from lingerie to create pieces that challenge the conventional ideas of sexiness: her designs may be teeny-tiny and revealing, but there is nothing racy or titillating about them. Elsewhere, Chin Yu Wang uses underwear to rethink masculinity. For his SS18 menswear collection, the designer looked into the history of Victorian undergarments using the motifs of female lingerie to lend menswear a certain softness and fragility, raising a question about what makes a ‘man’, really.
Arguably, fashion’s current obsession with underwear could only happen in a post #MeToo climate, when the need to re-think attitudes to sexuality and gender is nothing less than overwhelming. Fashion has always been at the forefront of change in gender politics—just think about the scandalous mini in the 1960s as a harbinger of female empowerment. So, one only hope that it is changing society’s views once again, one bra at a time.