Critical Studies in Men's Fashion - Current Issue
Menswear in Performance, Apr 2024
- Editorial
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- Articles
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Dressing for disaster: Edo firefighter uniforms and the kabuki tradition
By Robert HewisIn eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Edo, firefighters were cultural icons in the life of the city. A dense forest of wooden buildings, Japan’s new capital was notorious for its fierce blazes. The hikeshi (‘firefighters’) became instantly recognizable for their striking full-body tattoos and ornately painted jackets, which they would flaunt to the watching crowds after extinguishing a blaze. This unique bodily adornment came to symbolize their manly bravery and the hikeshi were soon popular protagonists in the emerging world of kabuki theatre; multiple ukiyo-e (prints of Edo’s entertainment district) document kabuki actors in their guise. In this article, I illuminate the interactions between the cultural phenomena of Edo – renowned for its print and theatre industries – as they shaped, and were shaped by, the dress and bodies of its firefighters. Through a survey of surviving hikeshi uniforms, I demonstrate visual and material connections between the hikeshi’s ornamented skin, their garments and a series of illustrations by Utagawa Kuniyoshi for the 1827 edition of the epic poem, ‘Water Margin’, about a band of mythically strong bandits. I therefore reframe uniform as an expressive piece of menswear through which the hikeshi participated in an invented masculinity.
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Performing fashion/fashioning performance: Kansai Yamamoto, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust
More LessKansai Yamamoto (Japan 1944–2020) was one of the first Japanese designers to break into European and American fashion markets. Following his first London showing in 1971, Kansai (as he was known) worked with David Bowie (England 1947–United States 2016) to create a wardrobe for the performer’s 1973 tour, Aladdin Sane. This article explores the pivotal role the collaboration between Kansai and Bowie played in the construction of the performative persona Ziggy Stardust. Focusing on Kansai’s designs and his approach to the western fashion industry – where he employed a similar strategy of deliberate ‘othering’ – I will demonstrate how his intimate partnership with Bowie, already personally drawn to Eastern aesthetics, was pivotal in visualizing the concept of ‘alien’ (both as ‘foreign’ and ‘from out of space’). Kansai’s work – synonymous with bold colour, flamboyant prints and dramatic silhouettes – is heavily influenced by Japanese popular art. His performative involvement in his own runway shows draws distinctive parallels with Japanese theatre. In particular, this article examines the critical influences of Japanese theatre arts, particularly kabuki traditions, and of yakusha-e (ukiyo-e-style actor prints) on Kansai’s oeuvre, and how the designer transformed the previous styling of Bowie’s androgynous Messiah-like character into one of the most internationally acclaimed glam rock icons.
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Fashioning fairy fellows: Androgynous performativity in the Savoy Shakespeare Productions 1912–14
More LessFor a few seasons in London theatres before the outbreak of the First World War, modernizations of historical costume embodied androgyny in both Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and Harley Granville Barker’s Savoy Shakespeare Productions. In Twelfth Night of 1912 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream of 1914, cross-dressing, folkloric and magical characterization through costume performed a gender fluidity at the heart of both scenarios. In Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927–46), Barker positions Oberon’s intersex hybridity as ‘travesty’. The Savoy Productions reimagined the androgyny of the fairy characters supplanting the feminization and infantilization favoured in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century productions with the casting and costuming of Dennis Neilson Terry as Oberon and Donald Calthrop as Puck. Neglected archival evidence of Norman Wilkinson’s drawings originally bequeathed to the Courtauld Institute and now in the V & A London reveal how his historical and ‘Post-Impressionist’ costume designs enrich understandings of these productions glimpsed in publicity photographs and reviews. These traces capture how the embodied interpretation of Barker’s players performed a folkloric androgyny through gesture, movement and costume. Cross-dressing in modernized Elizabethan ‘menswear’ in Twelfth Night and the exotic golden and sylvan ‘fairies’ of The Dream reveal how costume amplified the performance of complexly fluid and androgynous gender on the Edwardian stage.
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Daddy, horse, fashion: Masculinity and self-performance in the work of Jeff Koons and Michael Zavros
More LessJuxtaposing the work of artists Jeff Koons and Michael Zavros, this article examines the link between the performance of heterosexual masculinity and menswear. Notable early work of Zavros includes black and white, hyper-realistic duplicates of men’s fashion. Yet, in Zavros’s work, masculinity becomes unbound and absurd with a series of illustrations by Zavros in which the torsos of models wearing Burberry and Gucci are combined with the lower halves of horses. Koons, well-known for his fashion collages and subsequent lawsuits from fashion photographers, places himself at the centre of his Made in Heaven series, in which he is depicted having sex with his ex-wife, former porn star La Ciccolina, in a variety of graphic positions. Zavros, in turn, re-imagines himself as a mannequin in his series Dad, and poses with his family in settings both banal and exotic. Zavros uses his family within his work often, including his children in paintings as well as video works. When performing masculinity in art depicting oneself, how does fashion, family and fame come into play? This article will examine not only how Zavros continues the legacy of an artist like Koons, but also how this transformation effects the self-performance of the male artist.
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Mass individualism: The snowman effect
More LessThis study critically evaluates contemporary menswear, with a particular focus on the ‘snowman effect’ and mass individualism, to understand the complex dynamics between performativity, gender and socio-styles. It is inspired by the story of ‘Frosty the Snowman’, which illustrates how garments, initially mass-produced, are given life and identity through personalization. This transformation metaphorically represents the fashion industry’s complex relationship between individual expression and societal norms. The article addresses the issue of overconsumption, arguing that it leads to uniform fashion styles despite an abundance of clothing options, thereby increasing the demand for more authentic and personalized fashion. The core of this research examines ‘mass individualism’ within the global fashion industry, exploring its potential to offer sustainable choices while highlighting the challenges and opportunities it presents to major fashion brands. It argues for a shift away from traditional marketing, emphasizing the need for tailored services that meet consumers’ desires for authenticity and individuality. The article also examines the historical constraints on menswear, the evolution of socio-styles and the impact of ‘fit’ on the appropriateness of clothing. It also examines consumer habits and the growing trend towards customization in men’s fashion, particularly in terms of performative individuality and social norms. Finally, the study emphasizes the importance of recognizing the contemporary consumer’s desire for uniqueness and suggests mass customization as a vital strategy for revitalizing the menswear sector, reflecting the changing relationship between fashion, gender performance and socio-styles in contemporary society.
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- Book Review
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Drag: A British History, Jacob Bloomfield (2023)
More LessReview of: Drag: A British History, Jacob Bloomfield (2023)
Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 245 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-52039-332-5, h/bk, USD 29.95
ISBN 978-0-52039-333-2, e-book, USD 29.95
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