Do Clothes Maketh The Man?
A resounding yes, going by how fashion has helped to shape, reinforce and – increasingly in recent years – disrupt the masculine identity, as an ongoing exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum explores.
In recent years, men’s fashion has come to a tipping point. Celebrities like Lil Nas X and Billy Porter have been subjugating traditional menswear rules with their unapologetic love for colours, camp, gild and gowns.
Meanwhile, international cultural figures such as the non-binary writer, artist and public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon – who uses the pronouns they/them – have been helping to fuel the conversation with their activist work (check out the #DeGenderFashion movement that they started).
London 17th September 2021. Edward Crutchley presents his collections as part of London Fashion Week SS22. ©Chris Yates/ Chris Yates Media
The ongoing exhibition, Fashioning Masculinities: The Art Of Menswear, at London’s Victoria And Albert Museum aims to retrace the history of clothing and male appearance in a thematic way to show how masculinity has been – and is – a plural and fluid category. Here, a look from the Spring/Summer 2022 collection by up-and-coming British designer Edward Crutchley.
On the runways, some of the most invigorating collections are coming from designers contorting, blurring and fluidifying traditional binary structures. Many are emerging names – think Harris Reed, Palomo Spain and Altu (the barely year-old “genderful” label by Joseph Altuzarra made viral by Troye Sivan, when the latter wore the brand’s slinky black tank dress with prominent side cut-outs to the Met Gala last Sep).
Context is always important, which is why the exhibition includes contemporary voices in fashion and art to show the many readings of masculinity. Among them is the emerging designer Harris Reed – one of the most prominent voices in the fashion industry today advocating for gender fluidity – pictured here dressed in one of his own looks.
Then there are the players at the top-end of the industry, be it the poetically subversive JW Anderson or Gucci’s Alessandro Michele – a high-profile proponent of expanding the vocabulary of what constitutes women’s and menswear since he took over the house reins in 2015.
READ MORE: 25 Singapore Guys Show What Sartorial Liberation Looks Like Today
It’s apropos of that then that the Italian luxury label is the main sponsor of the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum’s exhibition, Fashioning Masculinities: The Art Of Menswear, in London. Opened in March and running till Nov 6, it’s the institution’s first large-scale presentation dedicated to menswear in its 170-year history and showcases nearly 100 looks and another 100 works that are supposed to get one thinking about how clothes have (or have not) maketh the man.
The exhibition boasts some 200 displays spanning modern-day fashion imagery and gender- ambiguous outfits by cutting-edge cult designers like Priya Ahluwalia, Grace Wales Bonner (above) and Craig Green.
These include outfits worn by gender-bending celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich, David Bowie and the aforementioned Porter. There’s a section that explores the male body and underwear, casting light on how classical European ideals of masculinity have shaped both.
Contemporary art works you'd find at the exhibition includes a drawing from Robert Longo’s famed 1981 Men In The Cities print series (above).
Of course there are runway looks from brands that have challenged such conventional ideals (among them: Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and young names of non-European ethnicity such as Grace Wales Bonner and Priya Ahluwalia). And there’s a whole gallery named “Overdressed” that reveals how, for centuries, flamboyance was the look du jour of elite males.
Among the classic works on display at the exhibition is Tiresias, a performance by Cassils in which the artist melts a neoclassical torso carved in ice with his body heat
In short, masculinity is a rich spectrum, though mainstream fashion has made many believe otherwise. As a statement from Alessandro Michele – drawn from the show notes of Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2020 collection and displayed at the door of the V&A exhibition – puts it: “It’s time to celebrate a man who is free to practice self-determination without social constraints, without authoritarian sanctions, without suffocating stereotypes.”
READ MORE: In Singapore, Five Young Artists Expanding The Limits Of Masculinity
Here, a few pointers from the exhibition’s key research assistant, Marta Franceschini, on how fashion has constructed (and deconstructed) the idea of masculinity.
“Fashion is an incredible barometer to monitor societal change, and what drove us to work on the exhibition is precisely a thorough observation of the contemporary fashion system. (Seen here is a portrait of Charles Coote, the first Earl of Bellomont, dating back to the 19th century that captures how men dressed flamboyantly in the past to show off their wealth and status.)
Men’s fashion is at the centre of attention more than ever today: Both established and young designers are choosing to propose their ideas – those related to society and to the political meaning of their work – on catwalks, using men’s fashion to question the traditional stereotypes linked to gender identity and self-expression. This is surely influencing the public arena. See how the media now overflows with representations opposing a univocal and monolithic definition of masculinity. ”
“Fashion has a close relationship with power and can be used to control and, at times, delay change. Fortunately, though, fashion is also a tool of resistance – something people can actively use to go against the tide and challenge assumptions and stereotypes.
Billy Porter (pictured), for one, is such a great example of how one’s fashion choices can express personal identity, be a demand for freedom, and propel change. We included two outfits worn by Billy in the exhibition (the black Christian Siriano tuxedo gown he wore to the 2019 Oscars and the pink Randi Rahm cape suit that he donned for the Golden Globes that same year) which demonstrate the agency wearers have in wearing clothes as political statements, turning fashion objects into symbols.”
“The research that led to the exhibition was a fascinating journey across time through art and fashion. It was amazing to see how themes would periodically come back and trends would be revamped, according to the sensibilities of the moment. This is what motivated us to work on a thematic structure for the exhibition instead of developing a chronology of men’s fashion – this allows us to debunk stereotypes such as the ‘gender’ of patterns and colours.
We thus decided to dedicate some sections to flowers and a substantial one to pink: a colour that became associated with femininity in the 20th century, but was very much a symbol of masculine power in the 18th century”
This story has been adapted from an article that first appeared in the June 2022 Male Edit issue of FEMALE