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Men In Uniform | Sally Edwards

Review by Molly Young

One of the first things you’ll ever notice about the Brisbane art scene after you’ve been to a couple of shows, is just how incredibly well dressed everyone is. I suppose it’s quite natural that when you get a group of people together who love visual things, how they present themselves becomes a natural part of the equation.

So when it was heard that there was going to be a show at A-CH Gallery in West End (right next to The End) that was going to be combining fashion and art, there was a lot of interest and quite a large crowd.

Sally Edwards is currently working on her Fine Arts Honours majoring in fashion at The Queensland University of Technology, and the show Men In Uniform is the practical endpoint of her project. Structured like your typical runway show, this collection of menswear went so far beyond that. What brought it into the art world was its criticism of damaging male gender roles, and its reconstruction into a more feminine, queer and subversive story.

The collection of about six pieces had all the classic shapes and lines you would imagine a military uniform to have. There was the classic military jacket, the high waist military trousers and broad pleated chest pockets. The lines were straight up and down, the cuts were sharp and rigid and had the sense of solid functionality in their structure.

This is the point where the similarity to classic military uniforms end. The most obvious thing first of all was that there was not one hint of green. The colour palette ranged from the dusky orange of the waisted jacket, burgundy reds of the turtleneck and trousers and the bright bubblegum pink of the coat. It was bright, unashamed and very camp.

There were also slight changes in how the garments were structured compared to the traditional expectations. One particular piece took the elements of what would seem like the button up shirt and trousers, with the broad pleated pockets, shoulder passant (that took a lot of googling) and bright gold buttons. Edwards flipped this on its head by turning the whole outfit into a playsuit, making it sleeveless, cutting it off into shorts and creating a waistline with a belt. In its rosy pink, the rigidness and formality classically associated with the uniform is undermined. The authority is still there in the pleats and lines of the materials however. It’s an interesting clash of what would typically be associated a feminine style of dressing, especially with the creating of a slightly more womanly silhouette with the waisted belt and the authority radiating from the traditional symbols of masculine, military clothing. I personally found looking at this playsuit, it seems to have much more functionality and flexibility than a typical military uniform, especially with the addition of the shorts. Not to mention it made that models butt look fantastic. A perfect peach.

Edwards also used material to circumvent traditional clothing codes. The russian-esque floor length coat in its cut and style is simplistic. Once again the straight up and down line, clean and solid shoulders and broad collar. If in any other material it would just be a fantastic coat for a man desperately gendernormative if you lived somewhere where it actually got cold. However much like the simple changes in structure mentioned before, this jacket was made very flamboyant with the change of material into a bright baby pink latex. Or course it’s idealistic to believe that colours should be not subscribed a certain gender association because of their history. But I believe Edward’s in creating this jacket is allowing for the commonly female associated colour pink, and the homosexual/kinkster associated latex to be invited into and create a relationship with a typically heteronormative cut and design. I like to believe this is a good step forward, sometimes inviting two people into the same room together that have been separated for so long allows for the differences to begin to be reconciled.

Shows like these, and Edwards’ work are so important to recognise as genuine art shows and not just fashion shows. It’s an important step into combining together the often highly commercialised world of fashion with the criticality of the art world and creating an entirely new language to politically comment on how people look at and try to understand each other by deconstructing and decoding the visual cues we are so used to. What Edwards’ has acheived with her show is a practical way to be able to intervene with commonly assumed notions of gender and queer associations, such as the waistline and colours into the often closed off world of straight masculine identity. In the especially closed off world of men's fashion, where the choice often only appears to be shirt/shorts/tshirt/button-up shirt/jeans, this is a welcome breath of fresh air. Another into mainstreaming gender flexible clothes for men.