What is Happening to Men?
in Herr (f/w 2018) read here: http://herr.live/essay/fashion/modern-masculinity/
Fashion is particularly interesting because its message comes across directly.In general, we immediately decide that the clothes on someone's back tell a great deal about their personality.With male identity evolving and menswear claiming more and more space economically, socially and creatively, it demands a close reading of its meaning.
Even with fashion often being progressive, both brands and clients still accept a big difference made between male and female. Pants are not just pants but are meant for either men or women. Fashion is nevertheless the medium par excellence to stretch these supposedly fixed ideas about gender. JUDITH BUTLER, the author generally heralded as the spokesperson about gender, claims that gender is a performance. It is how you act in some situations but it is not who you are. The act of wearing clothes then becomes a rather interesting subject.
In history, only the wealthy and, more often than not, aristocratic population was able to focus on appearance. In ROLAND BARTHES’ influential essay The Language of Fashion, he sees as much items of clothing as there were social classes. Each social condition had its garment and there was no shame in making your outfit into an indication. This because the gap between classes was already considered natural. That is why men like LOUIS THE 14TH, the Sun King, are only seen as vain or effeminate with modern eyes. In that day they were
Gender is a performance. It is how you act in some situations but it is not who you are.
This change was immediately enforced with the hippie-movement, with men and women dressing and coiffing themselves more or less alike. In the decades that followed, there was the glam of the eighties and a mixture of KURT COBAIN’s Grunge and PATRICK BATEMAN’s polish in the nineties. Decisive moments in menswear rarely were linked to a specific designer. Exceptions are the Spring/Summer 1985 Jean Paul Gaultier collection called Et Dieu créa l’homme in which he proudly borrowed from the female wardrobe. When asked if wearing these garments renounced virility, he said: “Virility is not something you put on, it is something you have to prove.” Another wave was that of HEDI SLIMANE at Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and, more famously, at Dior Homme around the turn of the century. He appropriated techniques from Haute Couture to suggest a more androgynous, sensual and particularly skinny silhouette.
During these roughly sketches periods in modern men’s fashion there seems to be a distinct difference between conventional masculinity and more expressive forms. On the one hand, the suit has only changed in details for about hundred years but on the other, fashion designers have not stopped experimenting with the male wardrobe.
At the moment, there is an emergence of a more balanced masculinity. Men are embracing softness and fragility that surpass out-dated notions of femininity and masculinity. Psychoanalyst GUY CORNEAU vocalizes the issue in his book Absent Fathers, Lost Sons: The Search for Masculine Identity. His work shows that being a man often still means to not show emotions. Masculinity is defined by negative terms: do not cry, do not listen to yourself, do not talk about your feelings, do not look too feminine. CORNEAU: “In other words, our masculine identity is based on blocking every physical or emotional expression. This rigidity and insensitivity are the foundation on which men build their identity.”
During the Spring/Summer 2018 collections, clear demolitions of this status quo could be seen. At COMME des GARÇONS Homme Plus, designer REI KAWAKUBO embraced the awkwardness of models dancing in glittering and colourful clothing. Her models literally and symbolically gave insights on what is underneath the surfaces by opening their jackets or wearing them inside out to show the heavily worked insides of the garments. THOM BROWNE thought about the past and being melancholic instead of advertising stoicism and pragmatism. With the source material for his cerebral collections are classic school uniforms and suiting, a questioning of presumptions can be felt. These two examples concentrated precisely on what seemed forbidden for men. The aforementioned JUDITH BUTLER would say this evokes ‘gender trouble’: create confusion about gender and make it a broader idea than it is now. We should, most importantly for our own sake, feel, dance and listen.
It might be time for men to embrace characteristics as spirituality, passion and expressiveness to celebrate their masculinity. However, CORNEAU acknowledges that these ‘female’ notions and women altogether scare men and make them feel forced to overcompensate. The psychoanalyst says foetuses in embryo state are female to quite an advanced stage and later become male. In other words, masculinity is an addition to femininity. This makes the psychotherapist question if that is the reason male identity is quite a frail term. But who can we blame for this?
DEMNA GVASALIA, in his Spring/Summer 2018 collection for Balenciaga, put fathers on the forefront. Maybe this was this just to highlight a group of people rarely considered fashionable. But it also brings to mind an explanation CORNEAU gives for male frailty. According to the psychoanalyst, children need to identify with both their motherly and fatherly influences. Inside the womb and right after birth, the father figure is mostly the other, or the not-mother. This figure becomes a third wheel in a relationship, which is not problematic considering his jealousy and need to form individual relationships is the first action to grant the child a place in society. It however should subsequently make place for a different, fatherly influence. This influence should, in his own way, show his strengths and weaknesses as much as the mother figure does. Unfortunately, the father cannot be this example, tragically because he did not have one himself. Growing up in a male-dominated world, this education is pursued and the boy is constantly reminded that being honest, imperfect and true (things he solely learns from his mother) is bad. Interpretations of GVASALIA’s Balenciaga give space to this paternal influence. The designer did not focus on dad’s working life but on the time he spends with his kids in the park and can therefore be considered a reflection on what it means to be a father. His fathers gave an air of compassion towards their children. Their determined stride normally is attributed to strong leaders but together with their loving way of holding the kids told a three-dimensional story.
It might be time for men to embrace characteristics as spirituality, passion and expressiveness to celebrate their masculinity.
A refutation of gender and feminizing of the wardrobe is too simple and, more importantly, distinctly dictated by time. For instance: when RICCARDO TISCI started to gain momentum at Givenchy, audiences were surprised by his kilts, long T-shirts and leggings for men. He hardly revised this view during his tenure at the French house but as he has left Givenchy, people somehow think of his work as very potent and butch. One reason is that his look has been adopted by pretty much all layers of society; tops ending mid-thigh have nothing to do with dresses anymore. Another reason is that designers like Hood By Air, Vêtements and J.W. Anderson have been blurring gender limitations further and more militantly. Not to forget the superficial way high-street capitalizes on the unisex trend. Because how unbiased is loose sportswear in neutral colours anyway?
Fashion, as a mirror of society, lately seems less bothered to make us question male and female. It’s as if there is a collective idea that men no longer need to borrow from womenswear to voice their newfound modernity. And they certainly do not compromise on aggressiveness. During the Spring/Summer 2018 men’s fashion week, RICK OWENS for one manipulates suits and tailoring into something more provocative than office attire. His high-waisted pants and svelte jackets and the utilitarian accessories were romantic but also more relevant for current male roles. A similar detournement was seen at Louis Vuitton, where KIM JONES tweaked blazers and sportive separates – normally staples of a classic male wardrobe – to something more urgent and unprejudiced.
Tailoring is admittedly one of the most man-defining parts of fashion. Put a suit or use tweed in a women’s collection and it is almost directly deemed emancipating. Designers are re-appropriating this prototype in a new way. At Lanvin, LUCAS OSSENDRIJVER cuts the suits fluid with a rather dainty result. The classic black suit also made an appearance at Ann Demeulemeester, but with SEBASTIAN MEUNIER’s hand it looked expressive and affecting.
Fashion, as a mirror of society, lately seems less bothered to make us question male and female.
It is exactly the mixture of hard and soft that make a modern man. A poignant allegory for the need of balance is CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES’ character Parcival. This knight stumbles from defeat to failure because he is only taught to use external behaviour of machoism. As his armour hides a vulnerable shirt made by his mother, he also hides his softness with hardness. A Jungian approach to this text finds a problematic encounter with the anima. CARL JUNG envisioned the anima as the female voice in a man’s psyche and called the male voice in a woman the animus. As these voices are found in everyone, you can say this creates an overlapping. Being aware of this overlap, why then keep trying to prove a limited idea of masculinity? In fashionable life, a wardrobe then can become what it most wants to be: a way to express every part of yourself.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
While this new masculinity seems apparent in contemporary culture and fashion, we should acknowledge players who are not new to the game. RAF SIMONS has always balanced sensitivity with youthful aggressiveness. For his earlier shows in the late nineties, inspiration came from the tension between frailty and brutality. In Milan, MIUCCIA PRADA has made male identity one of the biggest themes right from when she started her men’s line. Being a feminist, and clearly submersed in its theory, it is interesting how she concurrently pushes menswear. Exceptional for the Italian designer is that she refuses to avoid sexuality but instead embraces it in the complexity it really entails. It is nuanced and lively, going from savage to tame and from fragile to tenacious. In her Spring/Summer 2018 menswear show, the ways she put men in jumpsuits and short shorts made them sexual and powerful beings, but also endearing.
Other campaigners of a more nuanced masculinity, albeit all in their own way, are VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, DRIES VAN NOTEN and GIORGIO ARMANI. Remarkable about these names is that they have been significant designers for decades. Apart from having their core client-base, they have all known a gigantic interest in their designs at some point in time. They remained truthful to their philosophy and have seen the audience shift around it.
Luckily, culture and fashion are constantly evolving. In as short as two seasons, we may be discussing completely new topics in fashion. Standards of beauty and relevance of ideas are constantly questioned and tested. But with fashion being one of the clearest outlets for zeitgeist, it should be exciting to see where it takes male identity in the future.
