Throughout different periods in Western history, men and women have both embraced what today is considered to be androgynous fashion. Prior to the Industrial Revolution and before the decline of the aristocracy in the late 18th century, aristocratic men indulged in cosmetics, preferred perfectly coifed hair and powdered wigs, and adorned themselves in lace, velvets, and silk. Increasingly, the elaborate outfits of aristocratic males embodied the slothfulness and leisurely abominations of the upper classes. Proletarian men dressed in austere and distinct clothing to distance themselves from the aristocracy; they dressed in a manner that represented their class and Protestant work values. Women’s fashion remained largely unaffected by the restructuring of men’s fashion; nevertheless, women often embraced cross-dressing (although distinct in many ways from androgyny) to slip into male worlds of leisure, romance, work, and politics. However, it would not be until the counterrevolutions of the 1960s and ’70s that directly challenged longstanding assumptions about sex and gender that the fashion industry would fully embrace androgyny as a marketing strategy.
Attempts at androgyny have often reflected social and cultural movements in the 1960s and 70s. Second-wave feminism, for example, opened traditionally male professions to the working girl who, in the name of equality, sought pantsuits, slacks, ties, and pressed dress shirts to signify her transition from domesticity to a position of authority. Working women’s use of androgynous style, however, proved to be a double bind. Women with long hair and a conventionally feminine appearance often represented less of a threat to the male-dominated workforce, which increased her employment and advancement opportunities. To ensure the continuation of women’s femininity, today’s designers soften women’s work clothes to prevent women from losing their feminine identity. Thus, a blazer may be thrown over a blouse to support a professional appearance.
In the 1960s, males once again began to play with androgynous styles, but this time it was all about hair. Men’s visits to barber shops declined and, more often than not, they simply grew their hair long or frequented unisex salons. In order to adapt to this new trend, beauty salons often dropped traditional symbols of effeminacy, such as a pink and frilly décor, and transformed the beauty shop into a more gender-neutral space. While long hair stood in contrast to the crew cut, something that was highly significant against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, rock and rollers contributed to androgynous fashion trends on both sides of the Atlantic. The Beatles’ girlish mop tops gave rise to an older generation’s concerns that “you can’t tell the boys from the girls.” Indeed, a hippy aesthetic seemed to create as much debate as any political stance. By the 1972 Nixon-McGovern campaign, politics and style had completely intertwined and returning POWs (prisoners of war) were sometimes shocked by pictures of their long-haired adolescent sons and their support of antiwar politics. The Vietnamese, cast through the gaze of war, were caricatured as inverting gender norms, making men effete and women masculine, all of which, it has been noted, added to the sense of shock for returning POWs while fueling conservative reactions that associated a decline in traditional American values with women wearing unisex pants, shaggy-haired men, and left-wing movements. And in popular culture, the most visible symbol of androgyny in 1972 was rock star David Bowie, whose hot-orange Ziggy Stardust look gave rise to the 1980s mullet—a style popular regardless of gender.
A gay aesthetic would also have profound effects on the advertising industry. In the 1970s, the nude male photography exhibited by Wilhelm Von Golden, Robert Mapplethorpe, Arthur Tress, and other gay photographers also influenced designers to use the male body to advertise their men’s lines in ways that challenged prevailing notions of gender distinction. Calvin Klein, the famous fashion designer and founder of Calvin Klein, Inc., integrated masculine depictions of the male body into fashion advertising and merchandising after visiting the Flamingo bar in New York City. Not only did CK ads recast the male body in erotic poses of vulnerability and sensuality commonly associated with the female model, but ads selling CK One, a fragrance for either sex, relied on the youthful embrace of androgyny to sell its product.
In the late 1980s, some fashion observers doubted androgyny would fully reemerge, but recent trends have proven them wrong. Blue jeans, for example, once the epitome of working-class masculinity, were transformed decades ago into mainstream attire for either sex. However, a younger generation of men are providing a bit of a twist on the once exclusively male fashion by not simply rejecting the baggy style that has recently dominated men’s lower half, but also purchasing women’s skinny jeans such as those introduced by Hedi Slimane of Yves Saint Laurent. As well, both Emo culture (coming from style, music, and an ethos that embraces rather than masks emotion) and the conspicuous consumption of metrosexuality encourages an array of fashion trends and processes that blur, if not completely undermining, dichotomous notions of gender and sexuality.
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