Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - 10th Anniversary Special Issue: ‘Queer Style and Porn Chic’, Mar 2023

This article explores the design work and life of the New York based make-up artist Way Bandy. The beauty iconography created by Bandy is an important cultural record as it was imbricated within the larger glamour tropes of the 1970s and the draped, dancing luxury of disco divahood (explored through practice-led research in this article as well). Modes of dress, display and deportment often reflect much larger societal messages and meanings, and I would include the creation and presentation of the contemporaneous face within this cultural mythmaking. Make-up and cosmetics are vital components of that potent matrix, and Way Bandy designed the beauty aesthetic that reflected the sensual glamour of the disco era: glistening lips, alluring beckoning eyes and liquid silhouettes all echoed the promises of liberatory ease and an empowered sexuality for anyone who dared. His engagement with cosmetics was far more than ‘skin deep’ though, as he also engaged with the holistic and therapeutic roots of his artform: cosmetics (a history also explored in this article). Unfortunately, as one of the first fashion celebrities whom we lost to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), his life also must stand as a tragic metonymic of his troubled times, and the theoretical explorations of Susan Sontag from AIDS as Metaphor are included as a way of analysing the application of epidemiological meanings and the consequences of those processes. Ultimately, this research seeks to reclaim the importance of the Bandy legacy as his oeuvre was marginalized after his death, as happened with so many brilliant designers and artists whose deaths from AIDS overshadowed truly amazing careers.

The convergence of queer studies with disability studies has imagined new possibilities of sexuality, gender and the body, and developed Queer/Crip as a theoretical framework. Queer/Crip scholars map out connections between queer and crip theories by examining how compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness are entangled in the service of normativity. This article uses a Queer/Crip framework to explore how queer, disabled people use their everyday dress practices to construct their intersectional identities, as well as to stretch and navigate dominant systems of gender, sexuality and disability. Drawing from wardrobe interviews with 40 disability-identified men and masculine non-binary people, we present sartorial biographies of four queer, disabled participants from this larger sample. These participants come from diverse locations of both marginalization and privilege across races, gender identities, classes, disability embodiments and other social positions. Our analysis reveals that queer, disabled participants’ everyday dress practices dismantle dominant systems of gender, disability and fashion. However, participants also grapple with self-fashioning their disabled and queer identities based on the various ways in which they are intersectionally privileged and marginalized. This article contributes to research on queer fashion by demonstrating how applying a Queer/Crip framework and centring disability dress experiences opens-up understandings about queer embodiment and dress.

Transgender consumers are often unable to express their identity or construct their appearance in the way they desire. Social realities inhibit realness, and it can be difficult or even impossible for them to externally realize their full identity (Gray 2009). The purpose of this research is to understand how transgender consumers’ gender identity influences their shopping experiences. Utilizing a lens of gender performativity theory, the research questions guiding the study include the following: (1) In what ways do transgender and gender non-conforming individuals experience the current retail apparel landscape? (2) How do transgender individuals navigate experience shopping for clothing and grooming products? (3) How does the shopping experience exacerbate or alleviate gender dysphoria? Ethnographic and survey methods were used to gain understanding into the shopping behaviours of these consumers. Additionally, the researchers identified × themes through thematic analysis and several rounds of coding (1) gendered and clothing, (2) positive experiences, (3) the body, fit and sizing and (4) accessibility to clothing and fashion.

The fashion industry materially and symbolically contributes to our understandings of the gender binary. Its configuration of what constitutes crossing gender boundaries has also shifted through the years, including proposals of androgyny, unisex and gender-neutral collections. More recently, some of these concepts have been repackaged under the language of gender identity, as brands realize that younger customers are more likely than ever to fall under the gender non-conforming umbrella. Conflating an aesthetic preference for ‘gender fluidity’ with the language of gender identity can seem like a form of commodification when examining the barriers encountered by trans and non-binary individuals who work in the fashion industry. While the discourse of diversity is on the rise, some of the LGBTIQ inclusion in the industry stops at a tokenistic image level that does not destabilize the problematic structures beneath. Nevertheless, some designers do centre LGBTIQ inclusion and gender fluidity in their practice; but without a careful examination of privilege and access to resources, they can still reproduce exclusive and exploitative practices ingrained in the industry. This article will explore the above issues through a discursive analytical approach of online articles of the magazines Dazed and i-D, published between 2015 and 2020.

Male cross-dressing as a form of aesthetic expression by something or someone has been practised in fashion globally. This article aims to investigate what role cross-dressing plays in contemporary men’s fashion. Does it transform or confirm gender norms? In what ways can cross-dressing be used as a tool to produce visual politics? Cross-dressing or transvestism is a particular type of event affected by the multiple social, economic and cultural implications that continuously shift the meanings and objectives of the practice. I think of fashion in a broad sense, i.e., similar to a verb in that it focuses on the action or process of negotiating, differentiating and self-presenting in everyday life. My scholarly inquiry is situated in the context of the social, the cultural and the historical. This epistemological study applies an interdisciplinary approach that employs visual interpretative analysis and queer reflexivity. Cross-dressing practices in men’s fashion cannot be explained without an awareness of sociocultural context, narrative, gender performance and how clothing is selected and worn. I conclude by discussing the broader implications of understanding gender performance, sexuality and institutional power in men’s fashion.

Bülent Ersoy (1952–present) is known as the first transgender star of Turkish music. Since the 1970s, she has been a famous singer with the help of her extraordinary powerful voice and impressive performances, as well as drawing public attention to her queer identity. Occasionally, she clashed with Turkish authorities mostly due to her insisting on performing on stage wearing women’s clothing before her gender affirmation surgery that took place in 1981. She left Turkey in 1981 when Turkish authorities banned transgender performers on the stage. However, even after the surgery, she could not get an official female identity card in Turkey for seven years and was banned from performing on stage. When she returned to Turkey and started singing again in 1988, she described those years and her struggle to be known as a ‘woman’ in her hit songs through metaphorical ways. In addition to music, she also reached a large television audience through her costumes and performances as a jury member in various reality shows broadcasted on Turkish television, especially in the 2000s. In this article, we will discuss the usage of ‘camp’ as a strategy for reading Bülent Ersoy’s artistic performances, which are informed, at least partially, by the exaggeration of social roles, sometimes reaching to a point of absurdity. We use Sontag’s ‘Notes on “Camp”’ as a lens through which to explore how Bülent Ersoy negotiates the limiting camp binaries of artifice/authenticity, hypersexuality/monogamy and monstrous/virtuous in order to contribute to underexplored areas in camp scholarship.

German director Sabine Bernardi’s Romeos presents a progressive and more complete view of transgender experience than a previous generation of films on the subject. Skilfully avoiding outdated tropes in her representation of the female-to-male (FTM) trans man Lukas’s transition, the film instead places it in a cultural and sociopolitical context that shows him confronting ‘cultural cisgenderism’ and negotiating the medicalization of his ‘condition’ to obtain the mastectomy he wants. Romeos, however, does not posit surgical intervention as the central element in its protagonist’s transition but shows how gender identity and expression are conceived internally, independently of the individual’s embodiment. Thus, this article argues that the developing maleness and masculinity that Lukas exhibits demonstrates that there exists a significant difference between the penis and the phallus. Lukas is able to ‘fashion the phallus’ – what social psychologists have called a ‘cultural genital’ – with a combination of appearance (including his fashionable male attire), hormone therapy and a strict workout regime. Even though a male genital may not be present in a physical sense, the significance attributed to his cultural genital allows Lukas to express his psychic gender identity and to establish the trans man, in the words of one gender theorist, as ‘attractive, appealing, and gendered while simultaneously presenting a gender at odds with sex, a sense of self not derived from the body’. Still the discrepancy between his gender identity and his embodiment at times causes considerable problems for Lukas, especially when his love interest, the cisgender Fabio, accidentally finds out that Lukas is trans and questions his physical genital. That Lukas nonetheless manages to establish himself as a desiring subject capable of establishing a romantic relationship with Fabio and consummating it by having sex with him bespeaks the power of self-definition and the significant role that the cultural genital plays in this process.

This article is concerned with fragile masculinity and its tendency towards authoritarianism and violence by focusing on the characteristics of a specific social group/online community of men called incels (involuntary celibates). Incels are men who have no sexual encounters, blame women for their exclusion from sexual contact and create toxic online communities to share their violent and deadly misogyny. This article will detail their typical characteristics, including a discussion of their idealized body appearances. These toxic body politics are sampled by National Socialist aesthetics and charged with homoerotic looks and body styles. Like other right-wing groups, incels are driven by homophobia and racism. In their world-view, they also understand their own non-beauty-compliant appearance according to the mainstream normative of beauty as a reason for their sexlessness. The article focuses on the strategy of the misogynistic online community to achieve ‘looksmaxxing’ through cosmetic surgery. Their idealized body images sampled from various set pieces, from pop culture to Nazi chic, display consistent body ideals which feed on ancient mythologies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how sexual identity is constructed among gay fashion consumers in Hong Kong through myriad consumption practices. We employed ethnographic research methods and conducted thirteen in-depth interviews with gay male consumers in Hong Kong to examine the relationship between identity and lifestyle consumption, as well as symbolic consumption and tribal behaviour, within a ‘gay’ community. The findings captured four stages of gay consumers’ identity construction, which began with (1) negotiating one’s sexual identity and changing their perception of gay identity, (2) tremendous identity change, (3) consumption behaviour change and eventually (4) full acceptance of one’s sexual identity. The construction and the expression of sexual identity among gay men in Hong Kong were found to be associated with Confucian-oriented social structures and various marketplace ideologies. This study contributes to the existing discussion of gay consumption literatures by offering a non-western context where the discursive construction of sexual identity – and the negotiations involved in its representation – reflects the multitude of tensions between Chinese culture, on the one hand, and ideas of modernity and cosmopolitanism, on the other.

I intend to offer in this article a visualized research of teenager lesbian style on TikTok and a discourse of queer safe spaces in networked contexts. Due to the influence of the queer feminist movement, the social acceptance of queerness has increased in most countries. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning groups are no longer limited by the gay ‘dress code’, which is historically used to protect queer identity from discrimination and violence. During my personal nomadic experience moving from China to the Netherlands, I noticed that it is hard to pick out someone who ‘looks gay’ in the street. The freedom of dressing and self-expression has gradually become universal in western countries. Whereas, without legalized same-sex marriage in mainland China, visibility in style is still a signification of sexuality and a way of communication. Beyond the diversity of style, a new form of lesbian ‘dress code’ on TikTok has triggered me to examine safe spaces for teenagers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fashion industry finds itself in a challenging condition, which is accelerating its digital transformation. An increasing number of fashion labels see potential in TikTok as a new public territory to practise self-exploration for numerous teens. By analysing the visual content and interviewing four TikTok creators, this article addresses the gap between public and insider prejudice around codes of dressing. It proposes not only to rethink the relation between fashion and identity but also to ruminate on queer safe space through researching ways of dressing.

This article presents an insight into my ongoing Ph.D. project ‘New fashion bodies: Digital fashion bodies between the conflicting priorities of media-technological innovations’. The thesis considers how digital technologies have impacted the construction of gender as well as the cultural (body)practices and (body)enactments tied to it via fashion. The relationships and interactions between the body, fashion, media, gender and staging of queerness are at the core of interest. To elaborate and highlight the interdependencies of these categories and their intricate entanglements, this article studies the phenomenon of digital fashion influencers such as Miquela (@lil_miquela), Lil_wavi (@lil_wavi) and the digital fashion bodies created by the Institute of Digital Fashion (@institute_digital_fashion).

As many LGBTQIA+ community members face gender dysphoria, aligning their sexual and gender identities through appearances can make a significant positive impact in their lives. But while many queer people find that fashion can be a power instrument to create, maintain and express their personal identity, ‘In Real Life’ (IRL) fashion has severe limitations, too. Off-the rack clothes can be a source of physical discomfort and frustration, as they tend to be designed for cisgender consumers. Dominant styles of the community at a given time and space can be limiting as well when it comes to experimentation across the spectrum, as they also tend to promote cuts, colours and garments that may be more reflective of the zeitgeist than of peoples’ personal preferences. Digital fashion may offer solutions for many of these problems, as designs can be entirely fitted and personalized for consumers. Furthermore, many digital garments have prices that are a fraction of their IRL counterparts, reducing financial barriers to entry and participation. Digital fashion taps into issues such as self-creation and expression, while also addressing issues in both social representation, diversity and inclusion. Moreover, because most digital fashion experiences occur in a private setting, participants are offered an element of emotional and physical protection, an important consideration for individuals from communities where their gender and sexual identities are accepted or stigmatized. Digital fashion may be used as a means to establish identity and social relationships, and as a facilitator to bridge communities. This article explores the possibilities, solutions and also limitations that digital fashion offers to the LGBTQIA+ community, while exploring the ethical considerations that creators of digital fashion should consider implementing.

The social media-based #GraySweatpantsChallenge called for men to don a pair of grey sweatpants and share photos of how well the garment showed off their endowments. The accessibility and current social acceptance of sweatpants as a stylized garment allowed men of all races and classes to participate in the challenge. The Black men who participated received significant amounts of likes, shares and comments from female spectators who openly expressed their appreciation of the images on social media. This garnered the attention of predominantly White men who quickly co-opted the challenge by posting self-images with absurdly large objects shoved into their grey sweatpants. Although many people found these photos to be amusing, the takeover can be viewed as an extension of the scopic dismemberment of the Black penis that is connected to lynching photographs in the nineteenth century and to the myth of the ‘big Black dick’. Part fear and part fantasy, this myth is responsible for the continued fetishization and symbolic castration of the Black penis which can be seen in the creation of art images (particularly those by Robert Mapplethorpe), and racialized pornography (specifically gay). The #GraySweatpantsChallenge photos, however, do provide an opportunity for Black men to attempt a recuperation of the penises that had been literally and symbolically stolen from them for three centuries.

This article is a companion piece to the stop-motion animated film short Party Stick that I made and which is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70jfc7osN80. Here I describe my creative process, methods and motivations in making the film as someone who is both an artist and scholar concerned with dress as an embodied practice. I characterize Party Stick – animated through the juxtaposition and photography of different images – as a camp parody of white-supremacist hypermasculinity. While the carnivalesque film aims to subvert hegemonic normativities, I concede that such transgressive reinscriptions are necessarily controversial, ambiguous and meant to evoke ambivalent laughter. I posit that as a camp expression, Party Stick potentially highlights the constructedness of what gets naturalized visually – which includes naturalized beauty, desirability and sexuality – and what philosopher Heather Widdows characterizes as a hegemonic aesthetic ethos rooted in western beauty ideals.

A quick stroll through the fast fashion shops on any high street these days and it becomes clear the influence porn has on fashion. However, the mainstream fashion industry has always been reluctant to acknowledge that connection due to concerns for ‘brand image’. But just like the relation between sex and art goes back beyond Roman times, the relation between porn and fashion is of course not new, and even within the contemporary fashion from the last 100 years there have been countless examples of such collaborations and crossovers. At a time when hype culture is arguably at its peak and the merging of streetwear and fashion is complete, these illustrations aim to bring into conversation the often-denied influence of porn on this phenomenon. By framing the hype brands into explicitly graphic sex acts, the illustrations aim to present an honest perspective on this multi-faceted relationship and the often-denied pornification within hype fashion society.