POP 071/ Monday, 10 August 2009

Today’s Pop is Daniel. He’s currently in Antwerp visiting friends. Or at least that’s what he says – we suspect his obsession with the Antwerp six might have gone a tad overboard and that he’s gone off on an excavation to uncover the ‘true genesis’ of the Belgian fashion wonder.

THE GAY FACTOR

In the olden days, during the era of the supermodels, I once heard a rumour about Claudia, Cindy, Linda, Naomi and Christy. It was said they had been scouted by a heterosexual man, and this was the reason for their being so sexy, the explanation of why they could do both Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue and French Vogue at the same time. Other models on the other hand were of course scouted by gay men, who wouldn’t recognise sexy even if it was wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Sexy’. It took a straight man to scout a real woman.

Some things are just accepted as true because they sound right. What does it matter that they are based on prejudice, or completely without supporting facts? They simply seem right. And the thing that seems so right is the most common answer to the query ‘Why do models look the way they do?’. Because it is often claimed that models are thin and waif-like, almost boyish, because most fashion designers are homosexual men who want women to look like young boys. That is what those gays find sexy, no? But you are probably more likely to hear the short version: women models look like boys because fashion designers are gay.

 

Gay men apparently hate women.
If we for one moment disregard the fact that the argument does not add up (among gay icons we find the not so boyish Mae West, Madonna and Cher), there has to be some reason this argument sits so well with so many people.

A few years ago Tara Subkoff, the designer behind the now defunct brand Imitation of Christ, let off some steam in an article in New York Times (12/15/2005) referencing statements she made during a panel discussion. Subkoff claimed that fashion design was a ‘job for homosexual men’ and that american Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, only supported young gay designers.

It is of course one thing to observe the overrepresentation of gay men in the fashion industry, another to come to the conclusion that they stand in the way of success for women designers. Add to that the idea, not attributed to Subkoff, that they have an agenda (torment women with clothes designed for young boys) and you have something akin to a conspiracy.

And what do you know! In a column in the Irish Independent (9/6/2009), Kevin Myers (no connection to Michael Myers of Halloween), labels the fashion industry ‘fascist’ and states that gay designers ‘have redesigned the female body to suit their own demented needs’, that is, to turn the models into teenage boys. Which basically boils down to saying that homosexuals really can’t get away from their pedophilic urges and fantasies, which is plain and pure homophobia.

A more true description of the fashion business would be that it is full of powerful women, who more than often occupy top positions at magazines or work as influential stylists. During the 20th century the most powerful editors were all women: Diana Vreeland, Babe Paley och Grace Mirabella at American Vogue, Carmel Snow and Liz Tilberis at Harper’s Bazaar. Today we can add names as Franca Sozzani at Italian Vogue, Carine Roitfeld at the French edition, and of course Anna Wintour.

 

 

Still, the homosexual influence on fashion is interesting. Comparing male and female designers, there tends to be a pattern where women are somewhat more practical and less inclined to Thierry Mugler-like exercises in steel corsets, for example. But at the same time women designers have been at the forefront in choosing anemic, ultra-thin girls, often of a eastern European origin – just take a look at the catwalk presentations of Miuccia Prada, arguably the most influential designer of them all.

A more plausible explanation for the frailness of models is possibly the connection between class and thinness. A thin body is a controlled body, a body belonging to a woman who shies away from excess and vulgarity. Thin equals sophistication.
At the same time, if women longed for a magazine filled with fuller models, there would probably be one, considering the capitalistic drive of the fashion market (it is, after all, capitalism’s favourite child, according to fashion historian Valerie Steele). Compare fashion to porn, a market which have a title or niche for every possible preference. It would seem the thinness and boyishness of models are supported by editors, craved by consumers and adhered to by designers.

The more intriguing question when it comes to gays in fashion concerns their relation to men’s wear and male models. Many gay men have a convoluted relation to manliness and straight men, and it is strange that so little has been written about it. I recall Marc Jacobs once saying that sexiness to him was when a man just put something on without thinking too much. Dean and Dan Caten of DSquared2 also worked with this idea in an early show (back when they were only showing men’s clothes) and let the models dress themselves. A real man, a sexy man, is oblivious to fashion, doesn’t understand it, and doesn’t care about it.

 

Homosexual men tend to look for things that set them apart from straight men. For some reason it seems important to conserve the image of the straight man, to leave him intact, unaffected by fashion, women and the artificiality of the gay man. Straightness equals manliness.

Of course, many gay fashion designers revel in camp and gayness, sending out androgynous armies of boys or ultra masculine men in makeup and skirts. But the rule seems to be that the more makeup you put on, the more masculine the model, as if to counter the assault of the feminine with pure testosterone.
Many of the leading men’s wear magazines are mostly read by gay men and straight guys who work in the business. There is little heterosexual about them, rather they are made up of homosexualised straight models or badly disguised masturbatory fantasies. Not that there is nothing wrong with that. The issue here is rather how the power and presence of gay men in the fashion business affects the image of masculinity.

The last few years there has been a recurring prediction of the return of the bearded, hairy, masculine man. The first thrust came when Tom Ford put the athlete Samuel de Cobber in the ads for the Yves Saint Laurent men’s fragrance M7 in 2002, and since then we’ve seen people like Simon Doonan complaining about the frailty and boyishness of male models, but so far the promised hairy man seems to be exceptions rather than rule. It could well be that old school masculinity is too connected to other ideas, such as female oppression and homophobia, and that too much testosterone just isn’t that modern anymore.

In the gay world there has for a long time existed a sort of culture war between those who think gay men should be more masculine and those who play with gender stereotypes. The two sides often regard one another with suspicion, exchanging accusations. In fashion this plays out simultaneously. Both the drive to challenge the norm and the counteraction of so-called straight-acting exist parallel to each other, as if gay men in the business are trying to work out some kind of synthesis.

Yet for all of fashion’s playful male incarnations, it is hard not to get the feeling that masculinity stays intact and unchallenged. The heterosexual male is still the epitome of maleness and any deviations read as gayness. This is most evident when male heterosexual stars are portrayed. How many dirtied, bloodied and bruised celebrities do people want to see before they get bored? David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, Zac Efron – all of them has had their masculinity reinforced, thereby accentuating the fact that even though they have an air of femininity about them, they are undisputably straight.

Gay designers rarely want to talk about their sexuality, despite the fact that it is a big part of their identity. Even if this comes across as unreflective, maybe it is too much to ask of them – after all, they are creative souls, not analytical ones. The strange part is that there is so very little written about this when even four year-old children have heard of the gay presence in fashion.

Stylist Nicola Formichetti, fashion director of Dazed & Confused, said last year to Gaydarnation.com: ’99 percent of male fashion designers are gay. I know lots of them. They tend to go into the realms of pure fantasy when they design for women and then produce what they would love to wear themselves when designing for men.’

But that only means that gay men will risk falling into the same pitfalls as women designers who tend to, as Tom Ford put it, ‘come with the baggage of hating certain parts of [their] bodies’. It takes away objectiveness and makes gay designers more vulnerable to their ideas of masculinity and the relationship between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

So shouldn’t the obvious conclusion to this be that women designers (lesbian?) might be better at designing men’s clothes than men, straight or gay? Maybe the future of men’s wear lies in the hands of Miuccia Prada, Consuelo Castiglioni, Stella McCartney and Angela Missoni. Or maybe it all just will be a great metrosexual blur.

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