10 minute read
The Art of Men’s Fashion
Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele
18th centuryinspired ensemble by Edward Crutchley, Spring/ Summer 2022. Photo Chris Yates
THE ART OF
FLAMBOYANCE
Unknown artist, Dudley, the 3rd Baron North © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Nicholas Hilliard, Young Man among Roses, c.1587
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Ever since David Beckham stepped out in a sarong during the 1998 World Cup, designers have been itching to get guys into skirts. Now a fascinating exhibition of gender-bending fashion through the ages at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum promises to ‘unlock the dressing-up box for men’.
Men haven’t always ‘worn the trousers’. Stays, stockings, high heeled shoes and pussycat bow blouses had a place in the fashionable heterosexual gent’s wardrobe in times gone by.
Now their peacock past is revealed in a major V&A exhibition that unpicks concepts of manliness at the seams through men’s clothes… and what they wore under them. For which the famous London museum has brought five centuries-worth of jaw-dropping gentlemen’s garments out of its substantial closet of 100,000 period costumes.
Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, which comes with a nudity warning, ‘celebrates the multiplicities of masculine sartorial selfexpression and dressing beyond the binary.’ With a new genderfluid generation of designers like Edward Crutchley, Kim Jones and Thom Browne sending trans and non-binary models down the catwalk in frocks and frills, it’s perfect timing for spreading the word that gender-conformist fashion is a recent invention. Sponsored by Gucci whose Creative Director Alessandro Michele pioneered cross-dressing on the catwalk, the tulle frock he made for Harry Styles of One Direction’s US Vogue cover photo is one of 100 fabulous fashion highlights. ›
Kim Jones for Fendi Couture, Spring/ Summer 2021. Photo Arnaldo Castoldi. But it’s not just a clothes show. The Renaissance painter Joshua Reynolds, the sculptor Rodin, photographer David Hockney, Action Man, Calvin Klein underwear, Chanel perfume and male fashion icons dating from Bowie to Beau Brummell to the Borghese Gladiator all play a part in illustrating – through their paintings, portraits, sculptures and images – that once upon a time, women had to fight men for the mirror. Ordered nonchronologically in three galleries, the show doesn’t skirt around its subject, stripping male body image down to the buff before romping through the Renaissance underwear drawer in Undressed; rejoicing in the campest outfits you’ve seen outside a drag act in Overdressed; showing how the boring old lounge suit threatened to spoil all the fun in Redressed; finishing on a high note with a dazzling men’s ballgown finale.
“I really hope the show unlocks the dressing up box for men,” enthuses co-curator Claire Wilcox. “The whole spirit is to give empowerment to our visitors in terms of really thinking about why they dress the way they do. Menswear has such a wealth of fascinating history to draw on, nothing is out of bounds.”
Could menswear as a label be on its way out? Mainstream men’s fashion has a way to go before it embraces the full rainbow spectrum of LGTBQ culture, but the future is no longer just orange!
FROM GODS TO DAD BODS
An enormous plaster fig leaf opens the show with a giggle. Hastily made by order of Queen Victoria to cover the modesty of the V&A’s copy of Michelangelo’s David, the sovereign was not amused by the statue’s naked form when she inaugurated her namesake museum in 1857.
Juxtaposed with medieval corsetry and modern Spanx shapewear for transgender men, it’s a neat lead-in to Undressed which reveals the tortuous lengths men went to (and still do) in pursuit of physical perfection. Blame it on the ancient Greeks whose statues of Gods set a high bar: ‘A normalisation of hypermasculinity that has spawned contemporary gym culture,’ suggests an information panel next to a cast of the buff Belvedere Apollo and a 1996 Jean Paul Gaultier
Installation in Undressed, with Jean Paul Gaultier’s trompe l’oeil Greek god torso blazer front and centre
Cast of the Borghese Gladiator, late 19th century. © Royal Academy of Arts, London/ Photo Paul Highnam
trompe l’oeil Greek god torso blazer.
Fashions change, so do body ideals. Chiselled abs were of no interest to the Elizabethan gent due to their association with peasants. Shapely legs were considered the acme of anatomical perfection, shown off in stockings (hose) held up with ribbons, Blackadder-style. Conversely, in the industrialised 19th century, obesity was the wellfed shape of power and prosperity.
Styles were groin-centric most of the time, paying homage to the crotch with ever-larger and more elaborate codpieces in the 15th and 16th centuries, and ever-tighter and more revealing breeches in the 17th and 18th centuries when a chap could barely have coughed with confidence.
What does the average male body look like in 2022? The chubby ‘dad bods’ leaping around naked to champion body positivity in Canadian photographer Anthony Patrick Manieri’s iconic two-minute film, Arrested Movement, offer a large clue. It’s not chiselled but at least it’s attainable! ›
Dad Bods on film © Anthony Patrick Manieri
Jennie Baptiste, Brixton Boyz, 2001
IN THE PINK
A striking Joshua Reynolds portrait of the Earl of Bellomont in his best bib and tucker shows that 18th-century men had no inhibitions about wearing pink (to say nothing of ostrich feathers). But snap! Hanging next to it, a photograph of a male model in a similarly pink and shiny glam rock number by young British-American designer Harris Reed suggests that fashion has turned full circle. For centuries pink was the colour of wealth and power worn by adults of both sexes. Popularised by Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France, cochineal dye from South American beetles was originally so costly, only royalty could afford it. But new 18th century chemical dyes
BRIEF ENCOUNTER Between loincloths, long johns and long-tailed shirts, nothing exciting happened in men’s underwear until 1935 when Jockey Y-front briefs revolutionised ‘masculine support’ and dispensed with the need for a jock strap (hence the name). Boxers, named after the shorts worn by prizefighters in the ring, were invented 10 years earlier. They weren’t a knock-out success until WW2 when they became standard military issue and won war vet fans for life.In 1982 a sexier hybrid of boxers and briefs with the name brand woven into the waistband pushed everything else out of the underwear drawer. Called ‘one of the greatest apparel revolutions of the century,’ Calvin Klein underwear went viral after actor/rapper Mark Wahlberg wore his CKs showing above his low slung jeans on stage and was signed up for the ad campaign. From there it was a small step to underwear
Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont (1738-1800), in Robes of the Order of the Bath, 17731774 Photo © National Gallery
as outerwear and the sheer genderfluid chiffons of designers like Ludovic de Saint Sernin. ‘There is a metaphor there about the translucency of fabric and a new honesty in menswear,’ the exhibition suggests.
Harris Reed Fluid Romanticism 001 Photo Giovanni Corabi
Billy Porter’s Randi Rahmdesigned cloak was a red carpet sensation propelled pink to the height of chic throughout Europe.
It was also a little boy’s colour, the thinking being ‘red military uniforms for grown-up men, pink for mini men’ – until the post-WW2 baby boom when it became girlie. Many historians blame this gender stereotyping by colour on the fairytale pink gown Mamie Eisenhower wore to her husband’s presidential inauguration in 1953. Domestic goddess Mamie – “Ike runs the country. I turn the pork chops!” – set the trend that inspired a whole new pink market for little girls who dreamed of growing up to be just like her. Today, pink has regained its power and gender neutrality. Check out actor Billy Porter’s fabulous fuchsia-lined cloak, on loan for the exhibition. It was a red carpet showstealer at the 2019 Golden Globes. ›
Omar Victor Diop, JeanBaptiste Belley, 2014. Courtesy MAGNIN-A Gallery, Paris. ‘In a period of sartorial and political revolution, his tailored attire marked him as the equal of his Republican brothers,’ explains a plaque below this arresting image by Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop. A take on an original 18th century painting by Girodet from Diop’s African Diaspora series of self-portraits themed on historical figures, the football references the conflicting hero worship and disrespect African players face today.
CLOTHES MAKETH THE MAN
In the dapper parliamentary uniform of the First French Republic he looks like he was born to greatness. But Jean-Baptiste Bellamy was a Senagalese slave in the French colonies before he bought his freedom and became the first black deputy in French history.
Wool coat and trousers, and silk top hat, US, 18451853. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
MEN IN SUITS
The three-piece suit was introduced by King Charles ll in 1666 to boost Britain’s wool trade and encourage a simpler sartorial standard at court. It consisted of a long coat, breeches and a kneelength vest worn with a cravat, wig and hat. An 18th-century exhibit in pink, patterned with lace ribbons and flowers, shows how early styles were as eccentrically flamboyant as the Merry Monarch himself.
However in a phenomenon coined The Great Male Renunciation, men began to moult their peacock plumage in preference for dark colours and utilitarian styles more ‘suited’, literally, to the new industrial age. Stockings, wigs and high heeled shoes were left to the ladies in favour of black frock coats and wider pantaloons, a new practicality that chimed with the Victorian idea that men were rational, women frivolous and emotional. By the 20th century, ready-to-wear lounge suits in sombre greys, blues and browns were flying off the rails. Men were back in ‘uniform’ on Civvy Street.
Kaftans, jeans and velvet loons attempted a coup on the suit in the counter-culture 1960s and 70s but James Bond, Giorgio Armani and Don Draper kept it fresh. And, thanks to next-gen designers like Thom Browne whose skirted versions modelled by men come with matching codpieces, it could be here to stay. ›
Brocaded silk waistcoat, British, 1730-35; © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Silk three-piece suit, UK/ France, 1765-1770 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
STRICTLY BALLROOM
Menswear will be inseparable from womenswear in the V&A’s vision of the fashion future. And the show’s eyebrow-raising podium finale showcasing three bling-tastic celebrity ballgowns that went viral for their male wearers puts forward a strong argument. There’s the head-turning Christian Siriano tuxedo gown Billy Porter wore to the Oscars in 2019; the Gucci gown and suit jacket worn by Harry Styles on the cover of US Vogue in 2020; and the OTT Ella Lynch wedding dress worn by drag queen Bimini Bon-Boulash in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK when ‘she’ sang: ‘Don’t be scared to embrace the femme, whether you’re a he, she or them’. The message is clear. Gender fluid fashion is all over the catwalk and the red carpet. Next stop, the high street!
US fashion designer Thom Browne
g Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear runs until November 6, 2022 in partnership with Gucci, with support from American Express. www.vam.ac.uk/ exhibitions/fashioningmasculinities-the-artof-menswear
Thom Browne, SS20, look 10. (Check out that codpiece!)
Bimini Bon Boulash wears a wedding look by Ella Lynch for the final episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season 2. © Jakub Koziel
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