Thread for Thought

This is the second installation of the lecture I recently gave in a gender / sociology class at FIT. The first focused on the adoption of feminine fashion trends by men and the seemingly inevitable moral condemnation / censorship of such implied homosexuality (accurate or not); this one follows the appropriation of menswear by women — at first timidly, but sewing the seeds for the full-blown women’s dress reform in the 19th century.

I’m not pretending this is an all-inclusive history, and so I’ll jump in at the 16th century. With rigid social roles dictated by gender and reinforced by gender-specific clothing, one of the earliest and most consistent ways that women snuck into menswear was with accessories, specifically headgear. Well into the 20th century, millinery was requisite for the completion of any ensemble, male or female (in portraits with bareheaded subjects, the hat is almost always painted nearby). Hats were a subtle-enough portion of an outfit that women were able to dabble in menswear by minimally manipulating the size and scale or adding feminine feathers and furbelows (I love that word, don’t you?) to girlie it up a bit. Here we see Mrs. Henry VIII (wife #6) wearing a small, curved cap with ostrich feather that’s rather similar to her husband’s:

In medieval days when fencing was a legitimate form of conflict resolution, slashed rents in a man’s clothing were badges of honor to the living victor of a sworded confrontation. This was appropriated into general men’s fashion in the form of “slashes” which were slits along sleeves or chest that allowed the stark white linen underclothes to “bleed” through. Though this decorative style was firmly rooted in a demonstration of sparring virility, it was soon interpreted in womenswear,  muddying the symbology in a delightful manner (says me). Men’s styles at large already had a close relationship to armor with sharp V waistline, and pronounced shoulder and chest seams that impersonated metal rivets and joints:

Queen Elizabeth I was known for her lengthy “virginal” (that is, unmarried) matriarchal reign and, among fashion historians, her calculated use of fashion to assert her dominance within her own court and as a world leader of one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries (an interesting topic for another post). It’s unsurprising then, that she would sport these masculine slashes, pronounced shoulders, deep V corset and phallic sword to signal her capability and equality with male rulers.

The male-hat-adopted-by-females trend continued in the 17th century, even as the fashionable hat shape changed radically….

Compare to men’s:

Though women’s hair was always kept long as a symbol of sexuality, femininity and fertility, it was also always swept away from the face and neck for modesty (because of those sexual connotations). Though Henrietta Maria (below) might look perfectly feminine to modern eyes, her asymmetrical, partially dangling curls were based on men’s hairstyles (as is the hat):

As women gradually (oh so gradually!) branched out into sports and athletic pastimes, the only existing model for sporting attire was that of men’s. Therefore equestrienne gear was one of the first places entire female ensembles were able to mimic entire ensembles of menswear, often incorporating military-inspired embellishment (continuing the theme of war that armor-influence fashion introduced). Below we see Lady Henrietta Cavendish wearing a masculine tri-cornered hat with phallic whip replacing the phallic cane Elizabeth I brandished. The skirt hemline is slightly shorter than would otherwise be acceptable, to allow improved (though still cumbersome) movement. When women were painted in such masculine clothes, the horse is almost always in the background to confirm the outfit is for a specific purpose and not daily wear.

Compare to menswear with full coat skirts, wide cuffs, long (bewigged) hair, and military-style embellishment on the chest:

Equestrienne portraiture remained popular through the 19th century, documenting the persisting military / millinery menswear influence in that sport:

The woman below can clearly be seen wearing a top hat — headgear of the upper class 19th and early 20th century male — and jacket-like bodice with tie:

She looks not unlike a flaneur, a 19th century strolling man of leisure (note his female companion does not wear a top hat, as it would be inappropriate in this context):

As I suggested in my last post for men adopting female fashions, only women of the privileged upper classes could get away with wearing masculine clothes or accessories. You can see that many of the pictures I culled are royalty (who have a bit more leeway when it comes to forging fashion trends and thumbing convention), and only the wealthy could afford horseback riding as a pastime, much less specific (costly) outfits that could only be worn for that one activity. (Please comment if you know this to be inaccurate; this is my hunch.)

Next week I’ll discuss the specific influence of the Women’s Movement on fashion, and vice versa, as lower class women who simply wanted to be comfortable and hygienic championed dress reform as a movement of its own.

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I recently gave a lecture on cross-dressing to a terrific sociology class at FIT (and yes, I wore the outfit above), and I had such ridiculous fun (and stress!) researching it that I thought I’d share with the blogosphere to spread the wealth. You don’t get the pleasure of my witty repartee, but you do get a decent, if slightly inferior, substitute. I do want to give the disclaimer that this is not even close to a comprehensive, in-depth study of cross-dressing, but rather a quickie pictorial romp through the ages. This is “cross-dressing” very loosely defined: the fashions included are technically male fashions worn by men, but have distinct feminine qualities that were widely adopted, but also criticized by an endless list of moralists. Lastly, am also concentrating on Western fashion, which is, I acknowledge, an additional shortcoming of this essay, with the Eastern cultures embracing bisexual skirts for so long. So be it. I included examples of both clothing that was actually considered cross-dressing in its own day, and garments that were perfectly hetero-normative then, but appear to be borrowed from the opposite sex to our modern eyes.

I’m not going to spend much time on the ancients, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it took many hundreds of years to develop sex-specific clothing styles, and though the ancient Greeks and Romans from which we came did have differentiation between sexes in their draped garments (the women’s breasts were covered while men’s chests might be exposed, for example), those variations were relatively slight, immediately drawing attention to the fact that sex-specific clothes is a societal construct that was honed — as gender roles and expectations were — over time. Mighty, manly Zeus (below) wears a draped himation that could be just as easily worn by a woman, were the front flap pulled up for modesty:

The Medieval houppelande was a loose bodied, floor-length coat with narrow sleeves that became a symbol of gender non-specificity in the late 14th/early 15th centuries:

Men wore jewelry off and on, and in the mid-16th century, they often wore a single dangling earring along with their wide, padded breeches that resembled puffy skirts. Whatever femininity this might have indicated was counter-balanced with hyper-masculine pointy beards and codpieces (which were not uncommonly erect, in case you had any lingering doubts of a man’s virility). The pointy beard mirrored the triangular waistline, and punctuated by the essential phallic sword accessory, further drawing the eye to the crotch:

It has been hypothesized that the exaggeratedly stuffed breeches of the 16th century was a sartorial salute to (or at least an acknowledgement of) an age of powerful female monarchs including Elizabeth I (1533-1603); Catherine de’Medici (1519-1589); and Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). In the mid 1580s (just a couple years before the portrait below), Philip Stubbs wrote that apparel is a signifier of biological and social differences between the sexes. I find this somewhat hilarious, given that male clothes had so many feminine features (skirt-like breeches, emphasis on curvy legs, nipped waistline, elaborate embroidery, long hair), and also that King James I of England (1566 – 1625) — who succeeded Queen Elizabeth I — was quite probably homosexual or bisexual and it was known that he bestowed favors upon the male peacocks of the court.

There was a growing acceptance of licentious aristocratic behavior in the 17th century in which the choice of sexual partner was not necessarily restricted to male or female, but could incorporate relationships with boys alongside mistresses without jeopardizing the ideals of “manliness.” The man below has something of the feminine about him with his loose, baggy pantaloons, festive sash, lace garter bows, and pointed toe pose with fist on hip, but this was nothing out of the ordinary for the time:

Male attire was designed to emphasize the soft, curvy lines of the male physique rather than sharp angles at this time — ironically, women wore corsets that virtually flattened their busts. Both sexes wore  lace neck ruffs; lace wrist cuffs; coiffed, longish hair; and high waistlines with short pantaloons which emphasized elongated, shapely legs (hoes were often padded to achieve desired visions of muscularity):

King Louis XIV (1638-1715) was aesthetically extravagant in many regards (the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles is testament to that), and clocking in at only 5′ 4″ tall, he undoubtedly assisted the height of men’s shoes: some of his own were 6 inches high! As modern women know, heels also help produce flexed, shapely calves which were still very much in the style of the Sun King’s time. In 1663 the English court adopted the periwig, further feminizing the men of the time (the pointed toe pose should be familiar):

As the century wore on, the periwigs remained, and though men’s legs were increasingly covered, the longer garments that covered them resembled female outerwear, not unlike the unisex Medieval houppelandes, but with modern embellishments like enormous cuffed sleeves:

Post 1700, homosexual behavior was increasingly constructed as a depraved activity associated with a minority of effeminate men; by the 1720s extreme bodily gestures, affected mannerisms in speech and contrived magnificence in costume had come to indicate sexual preference (and perversion). Post-1720, the effeminacy of the previously innocuous “fop” was identified with the effeminacy of the sodomite, adding a significantly more judgmental layer to the language of male attire. The bitter irony is that there was still significant gender crossover in dress. Compare the gentleman below to his female partner: the full skirted frock coat resembles her own skirt; the wide cuffs mimic her lace ones; their gracefully pointed toes meet between them; and the long, coiffed hair is covered for modesty by the woman but styled and flaunted by the man.

The Macaronies of the latter half of the 18th century were often accused of effeminacy, with their outrageously tall powdered wigs, the rosettes on his shoes, and the teeny-tiny three-cornered hat perched atop his sculptural headdress. Macaronies followed the general styles of the time, but typically with tighter silhouettes, often employing vertical stripes to emphasize sleek lines, as in this man’s tights:

Though the wig in and of itself is deliciously ridiculous, remember that Marie Antoinette (175501793) was commissioning equally tall wigs (for women, it’s true):

The 1830s brought male girdles that created feminine wide hips and nipped waists (again). Dandy Beau Brummell (1778 – 1840) is credited with creating the modern 3-piece suit with full-length trousers replacing shorter breeches, fitted, tailored clothes, and downplaying flamboyant color in favor of more muted, “masculine” tones. With this feat he also accelerated the separation of  male and female fashion crossover. Likewise, the implication of caring about appearance now became associated with the “weaker sex,” whereas in previous centuries men were expected to primp and preen — and for the results to look like they did. Flamboyance was now expressed more subtly in brightly patterned accents like neckwear and waistcoats.

I’m taking a huge leap in time now, assuming that readers are far more familiar with the 19th and early 20th century male fashions and already understand how relatively monochromatic and plain they became after Brummel’s time. With the sexual revolution of the 1960s and Glam Rock of the 1970s, there was a revival in experimentation with sexuality and gender identities. Young men once again wore ornate and ostentatious clothes that often made explicit references to days of yore when the adult population favored the resplendent over the conservative. To wit, Earl Lichfield emulating 18th century male (and yet effeminate with embroidery and ruffles) below:

Open bisexual and hugely influential David Bowie (and other glam rockers) deliberately pushed gender boundaries by applying makeup, lengthening hair in deliberately female styles, and wearing high heels. Though the music movement had (and maintains) an impressive following, the gender role-play was viewed by the general public as subversive act of abnormal sexuality.

Allow a detour into Tove’s childhood: at the dentist’s office in the early 1980s, I picked up a small pin of Madonna with ratty, teased bangs, heavy eyeliner and thick eyebrows. I treasured it and wore it on my daily backback. I was absolutely flabbergasted to learn  from my best friend (who was a sage 3 years older) that the image was not Madonna at all, but Boy George, a regularly cross-dressing man I hadn’t heard of before!

On the heels of the revolutionary ’70s, the reactionary conservative Regan/Thatcher ’80s gave way to a new generation of cross dressing men, but this was mostlylimited to pop / rock stars like Georgie here, and those associated with the New Romantic music genre including Roxie Music and Adam and the Ants (whose frontman favored an 18th century pirate/aristocrat look with lipgloss and eyeliner):

Current revivals of cross-dressing for men have dwindled again, I’m afraid. Fashion exhibitions like the Met’s “Men in Skirts” (2003-04) confirms that men in skirts are anomalies to be studied behind glass, these days. However, the Utilikilt is a modern-day skirt for the man “man enough” to wear it against gender pressures, with a manifesto including “The Utilikilts Company does not accept preconceived limitations as our own.” Interestingly, it is geared towards men in construction as opposed to gay, fey, or transvestite men, offering comfort, ventilation, cargo pants-like pockets and optional built-in tool belts. Interestingly, it has been adopted by some subcultures like punk and goth kids that are known for experimenting with gender roles in dress:

Um, and also this adorably dorky (but admirably self-possessed) highschooler:

These days fashion remains a female preoccupation in the public’s eye; men supposedly dress for fit and comfort rather than style, and women commonly “make over” their men, keeping gender roles solidly separate in philosophy and image. It’s only been in the last few years that male fashion has swung back to embracing decorative, colorful elements (which the Utilikilt does not). However, I see this as a corporate marketing ploy rather than the ideal acceptance of polymorphous sexuality or the understanding of sexism as dictated by fashion. Marketers simply wanted to capitalize on the largely untapped male market (and the higher income-earners to boot) for what have become “female” products: makeup, accessories, hair products, etc. And thus, the metrosexual was born — a term indicating a heterosexual man who nonetheless adorns himself (like gay men or straight women are supposed to do).

As a final note, gender flexibility in dress has almost always been more acceptable for the elite classes (this was certainly true of the 17th and 18th centuries, and perhaps today as well), where it might be viewed as “eccentric” rather than “deviant.” For middling classes, clear distinctions between feminine and masculine dress signified precious respectability, so they were therefore more reluctant to adopt gender-ambiguous trends. Though I am sickened by the capitalist manipulation it seemingly took to accept a teeny tiny bit of cross-dressing into mainstream fashion culture in the form of the metrosexual, I hope this small step develops further to legitimize gender blurring in dress (because as you can see, we have a strong history of cross-sex trends), and dissolving ideas of “heterosexual normalcy,” and opening the creative channels of personal adornment to all economic strata.

Next week, I’ll dissect female cross-dressing in history, which, though superficially similar in concept, has had different implications of oppression.

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Until the article I recently read, mannequins in their practical form held little interest for me; however mannequins in art have always attracted me, most likely due to my obsession with fashion coupled with my fascination with unsettling representations of people (and who doesn’t love to be unsettled?). Incorporating mannequins — invented to market and sell fashion ideas — into non-consumerist functions is another aspect of mannequin art I find appealing.

Artists James Rosenquist (1933-), Jasper Johns (1930-), Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) were all window display artists in their early careers, in addition to (previously mentioned) author L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), so it should be no surprise that there’s a significant amount of crossover between “high art” works incorporating the lowly, functional mannequin, and “low art” window displays incorporating fine art. Modern art provided inspiration for window designers such as Robert Currie (1948-1993) and Candy Pratts-Price (1950-), who injected surrealist elements of violence, sex, and macabre humor into their 1970s windows. Artists like Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) and Andy Warhol and industrial designers like Donald Deskey (1894-1989) and Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972) also played major roles in transmitting 20th-century movements such as minimalism and pop art to the audience on the street. Barneys’ famous windows, overseen by eccentric Simon Doonan (1954-), have incorporated works by Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger (1945-) and often reference pop culture, as in this 2009 display with traditional female mannequin bodies topped with (arguably lowbrow) Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” characature heads to show off trenchcoats:

The window below attracted much criticism in 2009 for Barneys, though I personally think there’s something amazing about conveying such extreme movement — mimicking gangster movies — in a frozen tableau:

The Pucci Mannequin company (mentioned before) collaborated with many “high art” artists. Ruben Toledo (1960-) collaborated with Pucci on a “Shapes” series of mannequins for the fashion collection of Ruben’s wife, Isabel (1961-):

As you can see, the dimensions of these forms are atypical for mannequins which traditionally mimic the body type idealized at the time of production. By contrast, “Birdie” is curvy, hippy, and even has a little belly. Though she probably resembles the bodies of living, breathing women more accurately than traditional spindly mannequins, she looks startlingly disproportionate because we’re not used to seeing “real woman” proportions glorified in mannequins. (The obvious follow-up question should be: why?) Designed to be functional displays, I think these work as controversial art in their own right. Most artists who use mannequins do not attempt to be realistic, though.

Hans Bellmer (1902 – 1975) anonymously published an amazing “Doll Project” (a.k.a. “die puppe“) book in 1934 consisting of photos of a crippled-looking, armless, peg-legged young female mannequin posed in 10 tableaux. Because of the high contrast shadows and close-cropped frame, my mind wavers between seeing a decrepit doll and believing it’s an unfortunate triple amputee, perhaps in a war-torn country (and in fact the Doll Project was a direct criticism of the growing Nazi oppression and violence Bellmer observed):

Bellmer’s later work became more abstract and involved arranging increasingly mutated human forms in progressively unconventional poses (often focusing on female genitalia, which store mannequins still only attempt in nipple realism — see my earlier segment for more on this). Ultimately forced to flee Nazi Germany, he was welcomed by the Parisian Surrealists who appreciated his odd style (bless them!).

Cindy Sherman (1954-), known for her literally transforming self portraiture, has also experimented wildly with mannequins and dolls in her photographs. Though the joints of her mannequins are pronounced, calling attention to their inanimate-ness, they are often outfitted with exaggerated or hyper-realistic sexual and reproductive organs, wrinkles and body hair, as store mannequins deliberately omit. Sherman calls attention to our simultaneous discomfort and obsession with self-image: the ravages of age, our preoccupation with hair removal, and our uneasiness with blurred gender lines, as in “Untitled #250″ (1992):

Store mannequins are created to be sexy — sex sells, after all — but Sherman pushes this concept to depict dolls in explicitly erotic situations that are somehow distinctly un-sexy, also calling to mind a doll’s (unadvertised) function as a child’s tool to explore sexuality. The doll in “Untitled Film Still #255″ (1992) has been outfitted with realistic (if hairless) genitalia and is surrounded by ordinary household objects (hairbrush, rope) that, in the context of the doll’s doggy-style position, become S&M objects of torture and pleasure:

Helmut Newton has collaborated with mannequin manufacturers since the 1960s to create “twins” for live models, used with or instead of live models. Interestingly, he features many women with visible imperfections like scars which humanize them, while gashes at joints betray mannequins. He draws your attention to the falseness of the fashion industry, the ridiculous standards of beauty, but he revels in it too.

Violetta (below) confronts her doppelgänger, even while she mimics the imposter’s oddly positioned arm. Who (or what) is more useful in the fashion industry, flesh or fiberglass?

Newton experimented with the roles of mannequins and flesh-and-blood models, often pairing realistic dummies and women together (as above) or posing mannequins in public spaces and models in interior settings to create subtle disorientation. He frequently places human models in stiff, awkward positions as though their bodies had limited range of motion like mannequins (or more morbidly, like cadavers):

In “Store Dummies I” (French Vogue, 1976), two incredibly realistic dress forms are posed in a Sapphic moment of seduction, one on a marble slab (morgue reference?) and the other in a state of frozen dishabille:

I love how Newton pokes fun at the fashion industry, places lifeless forms in vulgar poses to sell clothes, drawing an uncomfortable parallel between glamor mannequins, vapid models, and outright sex dolls. And speaking of sex dolls….

I must mention sculptor Allen Jones (1937-), whom I discovered while browsing in an amazing art-and-literature bookstore in Montmartre several years ago. Jones is infamous for his pieces depicting forniphilia — where sexual (S&M) objectification is manifested in a submissive partner acting as a piece of furniture. Jones substitutes human submissives acting as inanimate objects with inanimate mannequins depicting human submissives acting as inanimate objects (got that?). These women (more voluptuous than standard mannequins, closer to blow up doll proportions) are sex objects and domestic objects at once, two roles (three if we’re including being an “object”) women have struggled to define themselves outside of:

I must also point out the rug, indicative of the era and also deliciously vulgar in its associations with bear skin glamor shots and art historical connotations of pubic hair.

Predictably Jones’ creations have been deemed misogynistic by many. He has humorously responded, “I was reflecting on and commenting on exactly the same situation that was the source of the feminist movement. It was unfortunate for me that I produced the perfect image for them to show how women were being objectified.” Gotta love the self-aware man!

If Jones’ pieces look vaguely familiar, it’s probably because Stanley Kubric attempted to mimic them in the infamous Korova Milk Bar for his distopian A Clockwork Orange (1971), after Jones refused to work for free. Kubric’s versions are stripped of their fetish gear and props (cushions and glass tabletop) and are monochromatic white, establishing a visual relationship with the white-clad gang of the film and with classical marble sculpture:

Early Surrealist painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888 – 1978) made a similar comparison many decades earlier, between stone busts and more animate (if more abstract), jointed, mannequin-like figures. “Il Ritornante” (1918) depicts a drowsy marble bust with realistic facial hair and a dummy composed of mismatched scrap materials. It’s unclear if one of the figures is actually animated and has created the other, but regardless, a strong connection is made between the structure of the room itself and the bodies: one is a caryatid-like supportive column and the other appears to be made of ribbed sheet metal, wooden blocks, and T-square rulers. The flattened perspective makes it even more difficult to distinguish the human forms in the foreground from the cluttered tower of planks and door in the background, visually uniting the human-ish forms with the room’s architecture:

In “The Disquieting Muses” from the same year, De Chirico turned the column fluting into drapes of himation robes, topped with dress form knobs that resemble disproportionate heads. Again, there are buildings in the background and a more fully realized Grecian-like statue that has a similarly blank, oval head, blurring lines between the structures of buildings, statues, mannequins and humans:

Fellow Surrealist and Dadaist Man Ray (1890-1976) experimented with mannequins in photography around the same time. His father had fittingly worked in the New York garment industry and as a tailor, his mother was a seamstress. Times critic Sarah Rosenberg recently wrote, “Dada artists used mannequin parts… as a reflection of consumer culture and war trauma.” The mannequin below appears to be ensconced in a tangled wire bubble reminiscent of barbed wire, with a ridiculous fake mustache (disguise?) and a protective metal corset. It’s not hard to draw comparisons to Man Ray’s persecuted Russian Jewish immigrant history, which he went to great lengths to conceal even after achieving success.

“Mannequin with a bird cage over her head” (1938-66) is a similarly posed naked mannequin that has been gagged, her entire head and shoulders caged, some tiny arm-like appendages reaching out of one side. Places where “private” hair grows — armpits, crotch — have been decorated with whimsical flowers and feathers. It’s sinister and silly at once:

As mannequins have been anatomically perfected and increasingly incorporated into the public sphere via window displays, they have also been utilized by artists other than designers and window dressers. Humans are obsessed with self-representation: in 2-dimensional portraiture, 3-dimensional dummies, and even moving mechanical droids. Even while we understand they’re inanimate objects, when mutated, manipulated, or uncannily accurate, they have tremendous power to attract and repel (I’ll wager some readers were disturbed by at least one image I included). Like few other functional objects, they have the inherent ability to act as commentary on beauty standards, surgical manipulation, sexual taboos, persecution, and the very relationship of reality to its distorted image. Some day I’ll have my own mannequin collection, to dangle from my ceilings and to dress up and undress and to play with, but in the meantime, I’ll content myself with powerful images like these.

Additional resources:

• “Mannequins: Fantasy Figures of High Fashion” by Emily and Per Ola d ‘Aulaire, Smithsonian Magazine , April 1991
• Fashion Windows “Historical Overview of Mannequins“
• The Show Window periodical magazine, edited by L. Frank Baum

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