Critical Studies in Men's Fashion - 1-2: ‘Globalizing Men’s Style’ ‘Sustainability and Men’s Fashion’, Oct 2021

Herman Melville’s Redburn approaches the topic of corporeal coding via the outer layer of clothing. Throughout the novel, the young protagonist consciously uses clothing as a means of self-representation and expression, deploying fashion to create and position himself in different contexts; for example, taking pride in his ragged clothes amongst well-dressed ship passengers becomes a form of social protest. But Redburn is also used to comic effect because his choices are often based on incorrect assumptions of propriety, such as his notion of the way a sailor is supposed to dress not matching the onboard reality. The rules of appearance that construct and restrain an identity are paradoxically bolstered at the same time they are broken, which allows Melville the opportunity to explore rebellion alongside the performative aspect of the self as a body constituting both a visible sign and a living vehicle for the mores, beliefs and ideologies that shape a society.

This article focuses on an analysis of Reinstitute, which was a performance intervention that was implemented in 2019, and which had the aim of troubling the construction and embodiment of the suit, which is proposed here as a garment that idolizes an inherently violent, hegemonic, Euro-American notion of masculinity. This idea of masculinity finds itself replicated on the African continent, including in the structure and curatorial practices of many of the continent’s cultural institutions, due to the legacy of colonialism. By incorporating alternative design and philosophical ideologies such as sartorial resistance, states of undress and the Japanese concept of má in the creation of sartorial alternatives to the suit, Reinstitute offers new insights into the practice of decolonial aestheSis.

Far more research is dedicated to assessing women’s fashioned bodies than for men’s in the Middle East and particularly in Gulf countries. Across the Gulf, male national citizens typically wear a long ‘dress-like’ garment, with regionally designated names of kandura, dish-dasha or thobe, and in colours delineated depending on the particular GCC state. Particularly focusing on the United Arab Emirates, I investigate how the kandura, when combined with the ghutra (white headscarf) and agal (black rope with tassels), becomes representational of national hegemonic masculinity and performatively styled to underline cultural authority and authenticity. These garments are deemed traditional attire, but on a closer inspection, they act as sites to investigate coded signs of cultural fashion capital and ‘local’ tastes. This article critically unpacks these constructs and their meanings for Khaleeji masculinity by examining three main ‘spaces’ – work, leisure and military national service – to scrutinize how the gender politics of space operates on men’s dressed body practices and underpins an emblematic presentation of privilege and patriotic manhood.

‘All Tee, No Shade’ is a practice-led research project that explores the use of the men’s T-shirt to challenge and disrupt hegemonic subjectivities that contribute to the marginalization and discrimination of the queer Asian diaspora. Through an exploration of my pilot project of the same name, produced as part of the arts programme of Virgin Australian Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2020, I propose that norm-critical design methodologies exploring intersectional experiences of fashion and dress can produce material outcomes that challenge the discrimination and oppression associated with compounding conditions of race and sexuality. I use the notion of ‘subtle’ traits as a condition of the East Asian diasporic experience to reveal how race and sexuality might be expressed through fashion production to disrupt conceptions of ‘otherness’. This is achieved with T-shirts that have printed graphic configurations that align with contemporary streetwear but with ‘subtle’ signifiers embedded through the signs and lexicons of Asian and queer communities. Using an autoethnographic approach, the work is informed by my past fashion design industry experience and reflects on racial and queer marginalization and discrimination through styling and fit. The project contributes to broader discourses aimed at decentralizing dominant narratives in fashion practice and responds to a lack of academic research into diasporic Asian experiences of dress and, more specifically, queer diasporic Asian dress.

This article questions if the propensity of Black men in globally dominant western countries to wear black or dark colours is an outcome of internalized subjugation and an adherence to westernized projections of masculinity. It uses the 2018 Akinola Davies Junior film Zazzau as its backdrop, drawing parallels with other examples of colourful clothing in the context of Black masculinity. Zazzau shows the annual festival of Durbar, a vibrant celebration at the end of Ramadan in Kaduna State, Nigeria, where the Emir of the region and his entourage use traditional dress and contemporary fabrics to demonstrate their sartorial elegance. The bold and flamboyant dress of the men is not only indicative of the pageantry of this procession but is reminiscent of the creative exuberance and stylishness of annual carnivals in the Caribbean. This article uses this comparison as a tool to discuss a reengagement with the creativity, styling and colour of Black men’s clothing, and demonstrates how an engagement with colourful design aesthetics maintains its sense of masculinity. ‘Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora’ draws parallels between the robes of the Emir, men’s costumes at carnival and the tailoring of Abrantie the Gentleman to examine how social engagement, living culture and traditional fashion intersect to influence and impact the ways in which men’s style is understood in Africa and the African Diaspora.

The subject of this article is Russo-American artist Slava Mogutin. A close associate of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Lotta Volkova, Mogutin has been based in New York since 1995. While he originally shot to fame as a poet and novelist, Mogutin is today better known as a performance artist, filmmaker and photographer. The aim of my article is to locate Mogutin, and in particular his fashion photography, within current debates around the representation of masculinity and the construction of masculine subjectivity/-ies. More specifically, using a visual analysis methodology, I analyse the camp aesthetics of Mogutin’s fashion imagery. In a number of ways, Mogutin’s camp aesthetic raises questions about displacement and identity, the clash between individual desires and social norms and – as he puts it – ‘what it means to be a young man in the modern world’. It also constitutes an avowedly political challenge, not just to the state-sponsored homophobia and heteronormativity of Mogutin’s native Russia but also to the identity politics underpinning today’s fashion industry. I conclude by suggesting that Mogutin’s openly political form of camp might pose a challenge to the traditional Sontagian view of camp as apolitical.

Men and the environment, it seems, have a tenuous relationship. This article considers the challenge of men’s underwear and sustainability by focusing on advertisements designed to sell ecologically friendly underwear. One of the challenges that I highlight is how we are to ‘read’ these advertisements. This article takes it as a given that images are polysemous. Drawing on queer theory, I propose a series of readings that align with Sedgwick’s practice of paranoid and reparative reading. In the case of the paranoid reading, I show how these advertisements might be read as indicative and proof of hybrid masculinity theory. From this vantage, I move to a reparative reading that imagines other possibilities, particularly around nature and the wild. The goal of these readings is not to have one dominate over the other, but to show the nuance and complexity of masculinities in/and nature.

Chinese sartorial style, like many cultures, has been defined, formalized and articulated to its population by hierarchical definition and visual association. Menswear styles have transitioned from strict Imperial codes, to westernized adoption, designed to shape a new modernism, as various leadership regimes imposed and defined dress codes to implement political and cultural structures. Sustainable practices were developed through the design and construction methods of Imperial garments and as a response to low resources, famine and inefficient management systems during the early years of the People’s Republic of China. This period was characterized by rationing for fabrics, recycling and the re-invention of existing garments. Through a contemporary lens, this can be viewed as an integrated sustainable approach to the mass clothing of a significantly sized population. However, intervening regimes including the post-Imperial Nationalist leadership and the post-Mao Communist leadership cultivated a new visual identity for the Chinese population as westernization became the prefix for modernization. This article aims to map the historical development of menswear as cultural capital in China, to contextualize sustainable practices in the production of garments and define how these practices were systematically and repeatedly rejected in favour of new consumerism. It also aims to historically define the role of menswear in China as a representation of the nation’s outward-facing international image and ambitions as a serious and contemporary player, within the global political and cultural community.

The demand for ever-accelerating fast fashion is unprecedented, while its supply chain burdens environmental systems. Hedonic fashion consumption is generally unfettered by sustainability concerns, but evidence suggests that island geographies–with dense boundaries between the built and the natural environment–have a heightening effect on eco-consciousness. A framework based on the contemporary condition of hyperconsumption is proposed: island geography heightens sustainability awareness; consequently, fashion consumers located on islands trade-off perceived hedonic benefits of fashion consumption against perceived moral benefits of connection with nature. The framework is supported by visual evidence collected on the Galápagos island Santa Cruz, indicating that male fashion consumers express connection with nature by means of tattoos, slogans on clothing and choice of eco-friendly materials. Quantitative tests with survey data from the United States and Ecuador show that residents in Hawaiʻi and the Galápagos have higher levels of connection with nature compared to residents on the associated continental areas. This effect is mediated by decreased perceived rewards of hedonic fashion consumption, but the effect is overall weaker in Ecuador compared to the United States due to differences in purchasing power and attitudes towards consumerism. Because of the stereotype that eco-friendly is unmanly, men are generally less likely to embrace environmentally friendly products and the findings of this research point to avenues to overcome this barrier.

The prevalent business model of fast fashion has received widespread criticism for being antithetical to sustainability. Therefore, many Gen-Y fashion entrepreneurs routinely base their business models on principles of sustainability. Additionally, the green-feminine stereotype not only hinders male consumers’ adoption of ecofriendly products but also poses cultural obstacles for male slow fashion entrepreneurs. By example of the Ecuadorian slow fashion company Remu Apparel, this article investigates how male entrepreneurs craft alternative masculinities through both personal and marketing narratives with the intent to mobilize the adoption of slow fashion and to overcome the aforementioned stereotype by reframing hegemonic masculinity. Interviews with the company’s founders indicate that the causal fast fashion business model is recognized as harmful and unsustainable; consequently, a sustainability-oriented, effectual, slow fashion business approach is implemented, which opposes the globalized hegemonic business system and concurrently challenges and reframes traditional masculinity. Through respect for natural growth, intermittent compromises and career as self-discovery, an alternative, reflective masculinity is crafted and enshrined in Remu’s business objectives. A visual content analysis indicates that social media tools are used to promote and stabilize the image of this alternative masculinity. The findings highlight avenues to mobilize slow fashion adoption within entrepreneurial networks and how sustainable, ecofriendly fashion can be promoted among male consumers.

Luxury is an industry that defines its value through the quality of its raw materials, which fosters creativity, elevates artisanship and relies on brand heritage and local production to underpin the provenance of its products and justify its pricing strategy and, as such, can be considered as embodying many of the practices of sustainability. Yet, despite public commitments and pledges for better business, both financial and cultural factors have contributed to a lack of progress in implementing the necessary system changes implied by slow fashion, sustainable development and the circular economy. Social enterprises use business to address social and environmental issues. In Tengri’s case, founder Nancy Johnston was inspired by her experiences travelling with Mongolia’s yak herders where she was confronted with the harshness of the nomadic way of life and threats to its continuing existence. She was driven to action when she juxtaposed these conditions with the promoted glamour of the luxury fashion industry, which relies on supplies of ingredients from just such workers. This article explores how Tengri combines social and environmental awareness with luxury product development incorporating the UN SDGs into a sustainable luxury menswear brand in a virtuous cycle of ethical fashion consumption and production.