![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/dimitri7-682x1024.jpg\")
Dimitri Arvanitis Graduate collection. Photo: Lee Wei Swee. Model: Bruce M. @ Dominique Models Make-up: Tom Vandewalle<\/p>\n Dimitri Arvanitis Graduate collection. Photo: Lee Wei Swee. Model: Bruce M. @ Dominique Models Make-up: Tom Vandewalle<\/p>\n
Dude looks like a lady \u2013 but remains a man. How contemporary fashion is tracking the changing form of masculinity for the age of gender pluralism.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Essay by Celina Plag<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019s collections. It\u2019s hard to miss. It\u2019s not the colours,\u00a0 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\u2019s clothing: a diverse use of fashion references, all of\u00a0which clearly originate in women\u2019s fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sometimes, silky flowing fabrics make their way into men\u2019s 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\u2019s all about the glittering fibres, body-loving cuts and patent leather boots. And every now and then there are even iridescent glitter dresses \u00e0 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If it\u2019s true that fashion is a mirror of society, then a men\u2019s fashion that is increasingly female will inevitably lead to conclusions about the men who wear it. It\u2019s not difficult to claim that the role of the man in public is undergoing change.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the 1980s and early 1990s there was an even bigger wave of femininity that spilled over into men\u2019s 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\u2019s dominating, disembodied suit was to be exchanged for their androgynous designs \u00e0 la David Bowie. \u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u00a0today, 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 Gar\u00e7ons, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n But what\u2019s happening today isn\u2019t merely parody or immateriality. Young designers are offering tailor-fitted menswear that presents the male body in an erotic way. Women have worn men\u2019s clothes for years, but looking back on decades of boyfriend jeans, jackets and sweaters, the \u201cGirlfriend\u00a0Look\u201d now seems sure to follow. What does it mean for men and fashion?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fashion Emancipates the Man\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The emergence of the Girlfriend Look isn\u2019t about \u201cturning men into women,\u201d according to the young designer Dimitri Arvanitis. In fact, he calls for nothing less than a revolution in the male wardrobe: \u201cmen are not nearly as free in their choice of clothes as they think,\u201d the recent Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts graduate says. \u201cIt\u2019s time for men\u2019s fashion to become emancipated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For Arvanitis this means a fashionable business look with baroque opulence mixed with a hint of the TLC-style 1990s video aesthetic. In his final degree show, minimalist straight-cut blazers, cropped jackets and crop tops meet pleated trousers, short shorts and tracksuits. Severe high-necked blouse collars peep out from beneath box-like, figure-hugging upper layers. Added to these, paintings by Rubens are printed on transparent PVC, and royal blue, ruby and ros\u00e9 are added to discreet black-and-white, flowing fabrics combined with evening elegance. Generous use is made of animal products such as fox fur, rabbit fur or calfskin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet despite the generous use of feminine fabrics and shapes, what Arvanitis presented was clearly a men\u2019s collection, whose tension lay in the breaking of boundaries between typical male and female elements, and creating something new from the interplay. He succeeds because his fabrics and garments don\u2019t appear as womenswear, but instead make sense as a fashion reference in men\u2019s clothing. \u201cMy dresses only look like women\u2019s clothes at first glance,\u201d Arvanitis explains, \u201cbut actually they serve as the basic pattern for a classic men\u2019s suit. Only without lapels.\u201d<\/p>\n This is precisely where the difference between travesty and fashion, between clothes-swap and the Girlfriend Look, is visible. Just as women\u2019s jeans in the Boyfriend Look simply reprise the jeans of her partner, they are in fact femininely transformed because they are cut for the female body. And the same is true for garments of the Girlfriend Look. Female connotations, once presented within the context of men\u2019s fashion, are drained of their symbolic power and charged with a new, masculine significance. The required revolution in men\u2019s fashion is therefore an expansion of the canon of menswear in order to help men gain the freedom of fashion, something that has been played with since the dawn of modernity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the process the boundaries of gender are dissolved, albeit not completely. Because the new, expanded style still requires the binary system of female and male gender division, tension can only be generated by exceeding\u00a0the corresponding limits. This also becomes clear in the new muses de jour: Lea T., Casey Legler or Andrej Pejic. They fascinate because they combine feminine and masculine characteristics and evade a clear gender classification.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fact that social ideas of male or female can be negotiated within fashion changes nothing, of course. The same is true for the fact that these boundaries are becoming ever more fluid and as a result men and women\u2019s collections continue to become closer to one another. So far, a fine distinction remains, at least in terms of the biological barriers of the body.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unconscious Oppositions<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n But what is also interesting in this context is that none of the designers mentioned above make a very conscious use of female references. On the contrary: for Arvanitis, for instance, they are but one tool of many. \u201cWhen I design, I mostly do not even consciously\u00a0think about whether I am using\u00a0elements that have a feminine reputation. What\u2019s important is the freedom to be inspired by what I want. And to investigate the question of whether I would wear it myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Christopher Shannon takes a similar view. This Liverpudlian favourite of London men\u2019s shows has already collaborated with Topshop and Eastpak among others, is represented in venerable department stores such as Harvey Nichols and Liberty London, and found a global audience with his jersey line Kidda via ASOS and Urban Outfitters. For him, the work is primarily about creating something that feels new, and represents an opinion. In doing so, he wants to remain faithful to his\u00a0 line. \u201cFor me it\u2019s about making work that I want to make, not about an agenda to do with feminising men,\u201d the young designer says, before adding, \u201cI am drawn to elements that may make men feel slightly unsure, but I also think I\u2019m good at making them less threatening \u2013 shall we say more desirable or curious.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Feminine connotations are what could lead male wearers to feel \u201cslightly unsure\u201d and yet also feel okay about themselves. This was the case with Shannon\u2019s acclaimed SS14 collection, which is an homage to his early party years in Liverpool and Manchester. It is characterised by a targeted use of pink and sunny yellow, animal prints and mille fleur, and not least by the\u00a0colourful, glittery hair of the models. \u00a0<\/p>\n What is revealed in the attitude of Shannon and Arvanitis? If you don\u2019t want menswear to always fall back upon the same vocabulary, then you need to resort to feminine elements, if not consciously but because it is inevitable. Apart from shirt, trousers and the jacket in all its variations, is there much left in fashion when considering what is \u201ctypically male\u201d? Fashion, as we know it in the western world, since the modern era, is a purely female construction. If it is essentially female, one could say that men\u2019s clothing only becomes men\u2019s fashion in the moment in which it differs from the uniform of the suit and when female elements are incorporated.<\/p>\n From Utopia to the Mainstream\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The idea of a revolution in men\u2019s fashion \u2013 regardless of motive \u2013 is therefore not just a fantastic utopia. Ultimately, those collections that stand for a liberated men\u2019s fashion are mainly from younger, lateral-thinking labels, but the tendency is emerging even among established fashion houses; in practically every Autumn\/Winter collection there is currently at least one look that clearly includes references to women\u2019s fashion. In this, the major labels aren\u2019t very different from the youngers ones: Herm\u00e8s showed a pink sweater and Jil Sander showed a sleeveless frock coat reminiscent\u00a0 of the over-long elegant vests currently found across the women\u2019s collections. Dolce & Gabbana, in contrast, presents floral prints and embroidery and Dries van Noten does paisley and sequins. Z Zegna even extends to fetish: here the models wear flat peep-toe boots that help to give the male foot an unfamiliar sex appeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Currently it seems almost as if everyone wants to try the Girlfriend Look. While a paradigm shift in the design DNA of the collections of men\u2019s luxury labels is out of the question, it is suggestive of something more subtle, and it is being played out in front of the general public. Once you look at it from the economic side, one could almost assume that this mainstream is becoming increasingly receptive to symbolic transgressions on the part of men\u2019s fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, LVMH is to become financially involved with the London-based designer J.W. Anderson, the model student of the Girlfriend Look. The label of young Irishman Jonathan William Anderson has only existed since 2008 but is already being sold in over 70 outlets. The LVMH tie-in represents his rise up the ranks to join the most important designers of the future, and accompanies an expansion together with a group that also includes established luxury marques including Louis Vuitton, C\u00e9line and Marc Jacobs. For LVMH, it appears to suggest there\u2019s money in androgyny.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n After the presentation of his SS14 collection, Anderson, who claims to have only been making \u201creal\u201d menswear for his last three collections, told style.com: \u201cI feel like menswear has gotten to a point for me where it had to be thrown out the window and dragged back in. There\u2019s something that has gone stale for a while in men\u2019s, and I think you have to blow it up \u2013 then you\u2019ve\u00a0spawned a look.\u201d As a result, he has presented above all a playful and elegant version of the man. What next spring will become airy halter tops printed with delicate florals or classic shift dresses were preceded in the current winter collection by architectural bandeau or tank tops, which were worn with hot pants ornamented with ruffles. Endlessly long naked male legs were in jackboots, the ends of which were also decorated with girlish ruffles.\u00a0<\/p>\n The significant influence of the Girlfriend Look on men\u2019s fashion suggests that the public image of the man is becoming ever more plural. A system of signs that has remained constant over the last 200 years can now be seen to be shifting, albeit slowly; we\u2019re unlikely to see the skirt-wearing man dominating the urban environment in the near future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Above all, what the emancipation of men\u2019s fashion has achieved to date is that it now follows women\u2019s fashion in its main principles. Both have left modernity behind and find themselves in the present, where they enjoy the freedom to draw from a large canon of individual elements, the meanings of which they then change according to taste. This does not speak for a fashionable resolution to the battle of the sexes \u2013 but rather for gender equity.\u00a0<\/p>\n From the perspective of modern Protestant theory, according to which fashion represents nothing more than a superficial gimmick, you might wonder what kind of progress is represented by the fact that the man is now permitted to be fashionable. But looking at fashion through the eyes of a euphoric theory, then you cannot see modernity from the perspective of the autonomy of the man, but as a period of loss, in which the right to present himself as beautiful and erotic was denied. If you believe John Carl Fl\u00fcgel\u2019s famous 1930 essay on the philosophy of fashion \u201cThe Psychology of Clothes\u201d \u2013 a Freudian-inspired analysis of people\u2019s fundamental motives for dressing \u2013 then adornment is one of the great needs of mankind. There may have been cultures in history which wore no clothes, but there were never any who didn\u2019t make an effort to enhance their appearance. If today\u2019s post-fashion now admits this need for men too, it gifts him nothing less than the joy of his own physicality.<\/p>\n Entnommen aus Sleek 40 \u201cMann\/Junge\u201d<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dimitri Arvanitis Graduate collection. Photo: Lee Wei Swee. Model: Bruce M. @ Dominique Models Make-up: Tom Vandewalle Dude looks like a lady \u2013 but remains a man. How contemporary fashion is tracking the changing form of masculinity for the age of gender pluralism.\u00a0 Essay by Celina Plag Pay any attention to the fashion visions that…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1119,656,1120,21,1121,1122,1123,1124],"class_list":["post-11936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aw13","tag-celina-plag","tag-dimitri-arvanitis","tag-fashion","tag-j-w-anderson","tag-ss14","tag-walter-van-beirendonck","tag-xander-zhou"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/JWA_M_AW13_Runway_02_PRINT-767x1024.jpg\")
J.W. Anderson Men AW 13<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Walter-Van-Beirendonck-AW13-682x1024.jpg\")
Walter Van Beirendonck AW13<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/2014ss004-682x1024.jpg\")
Xander Zhou SS14<\/p>\n