Paraphrase the Androgynous Fashion - Case Study Example

Coco Chanel/Gabrielle Chanel Coco Chanel (Fashion designer), born August 19, 1883, in Saumur, France. She is famous for her timeless designs, trademark suits, and little black dress. Chanel was raised in an orphanage and taught how to sew. She was a singer before opening her first clothes shop. Moreover, In the 1920s, she launched her first perfume, introduced the Chanel suit and the little black dress. In 1910, he opened her first shop On Paris’s Rue Cambon, Chanel started out selling hats. She later added stores in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. In the 1920s, Chanel took her thriving business to new heights. She launched her first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which was the first to feature a designer’s name. In 1925, she introduced the Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. He borrowed some elements of men’s wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say good-bye to the days of corsets and other confining garments. Yves Saint Laurent He championed for women tailoring, in his style he never crossed the line between fashion and fancy dress. He recognised the significance of branding. Saint Laurent’s reputation was built on his supreme tailoring. The first to feminise a man’s tuxedo with “le smoking” in 1966, he anticipated power-dressing by a decade. The Saint Laurent jacket, with its precise shoulder line and polished appearance woman. Jean Paul Gaultie. The girlfriend look’ is all the rage on the catwalk and a new exhibition of work by the gender-bending designer Jean Paul Gaultier is opening in Paris. He enjoyed the swaggering macho men.At a recent Gucci show in Milan, louche, long-haired male models sauntered down the runway in chiffon and lace, pussy-bow blouses and high-waisted flares. It was gender blurring as never seen before at the venerable Italian fashion house, courtesy of the label’s new creative director Alessandro Michele. And that wasn’t the only surprise. The Gucci girls, meanwhile, walked the runway in boyish, geeky styles. Gucci is not alone. JW Anderson and Meadham Kirchoff have also shown an interest in gender-fluid fashion, and Saint Laurent, Prada and Givenchy are just some of the names whose recent menswear collections have proffered skirts, high-heeled boots, chiffon blouses and a general prevalence of pink. Boundaries are coming down in other ways too, with transgender models becoming more and more popular on the catwalk. We’ve seen ‘boyfriend dressing’ before – outsized, mannish jeans, sweaters, jackets and coats worn by women that are seemingly purloined from their male partner’s wardrobes. But now the moment of ‘girlfriend dressing’ has arrived too – at least in the rarefied circles of the fashion world. For the devotedly fashion-conscious man it is currently all about feminisation. Meanwhile, women’s wear is looking distinctly blocky, with fashion-industry insiders on the front row sporting flat shoes and low-key tailoring. For several years Phoebe Philo at Céline has specialised in understated, mannish tailoring for women, and now the rest of fashion is catching up. Recent advertising has echoed the mood with Cara Delevingne posing among a group of boys in a DKNY campaign and Julia Roberts posing in sharp, masculine tailoring for Givenchy. And if any more evidence was needed that gender-neutral fashion is enjoying a moment, just look inside famously directional London department store Selfridges, which has recently opened a whole new department, named Agender, with all merchandise by 15 different designers presented as unisex. Gender bender It seems an appropriate moment then for one of modern androgyny’s pioneers to see his world-touring exhibition come to a triumphant finale. The is arriving at the Grand Palais in Paris, the designer’s hometown, this month. Gaultier, who recently retired from ready-to-wear design, has been a creative force in fashion for nearly four decades.The designer’s fascination with transformation and transgression has seen his work cross – and erase – boundaries between cultures, sub-cultures and the sexes. His skirts for men created a huge stir when they first appeared in 1985. Gaultier, along with Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, Comme des Garçons and Helmut Lang, made androgyny one of fashion’s defining characteristics in the 1980s and ‘90s. So ground-breaking was Gaultier’s early work that many examples of it are housed in the permanent collection of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Curator of fashion at the V&A Oriole Cullen tells BBC Culture there was “an inclusivity about Gaultier’s work, he always encouraged different body shapes on the catwalk, and there was a joy and positivity about it. He was very inspired by punk and the New Romantics, and what was called at the time ‘gender-bending’. He did it with a great sense of humour.” Dress codes Of course, cross-dressing is nothing remotely new. The V&A’s Oriole Cullen gives as one of the best known historical examples the 18th Century French diplomat, soldier and transvestite the Chevalier d’Eon who lived much of his life as a woman. Later, she points out, Claude Cahun, a French Surrealist photographer who was born a woman identified herself as ‘agender’ in the early part of the 20th Century. But when and why has androgyny seeped into the mainstream? Looking back, it seems that social upheaval and a rise in androgynous styles often went hand in hand. The 1920s was a particularly defining moment, according to Cullen. “The look for women was very gender neutral with underwear designed to flatten breasts and a tubular silhouette, with hair bobbed short.” The timing was no accident, she says. “It was the birth of modernity, there were lots of young women entering the workforce and becoming independent.” The formidable Marlene Dietrich and Lauren Bacall were among the early female movie icons who played with androgyny. And during World War Two, functional trousers, brogues and boyish knitwear, meanwhile, became popular garb for the British Land Girls. The 1960s saw another upsurge in androgynous dressing for both women and men, as the counter culture took hold, women’s liberation gained ground and social mores changed. When the Rolling Stones played London’s Hyde Park, Mick Jagger wore a ‘man’s dress’ designed by British designer Mr Fish. Meanwhile Yves Saint Laurent’s tuxedo for women, Le Smoking, created in 1966, was a landmark in mannish chic. Saint Laurent told Women’s Wear Daily: “I thought the Smoking was more modern than an evening gown. It played with a certain ambiguity…. I created something that looked equally chic on men and women.” Into the 1970s the likes of Diane Keaton as Annie Hall and Patti Smith helped popularise the androgynous look for women, while Marc Bolan and David Bowie toyed with girlish looks – Bowie even appeared on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World, like Jagger before him, in a Mr Fish dress. So why are we now experiencing another surge in gender-fluid styles? “It’s about the younger generation pushing against boundaries,” says Oriole Cullen.  “But also it’s a reflection of where we are. There’s a new interest in feminism, you can’t ignore that, it feeds into fashion. Women are lucky that we’ve been able to adopt androgynous looks easily. And in society there’s a focus now on the trans community. And sexuality is no longer the big issue it was.” Androgyny’s Fashion From men in wigs in the 1700s, to David Bowie and Diane Keaton’s Annie Hallin the 1970s, fashion has long toyed with gender boundaries. But this coming season, a new trend of gender-flouting suggests the next phase will be less about men in skirts, and more about men and women sharing skirts. Welcome to the world of gender-neutral fashion.  An as yet untitled new documentary produced by Lena Dunham’s company, A Casual Romance Productions, is set to chart the growth in gender-nonconforming fashion. Its main subject, Rachel Tutera, 29, who works for New York tailors Bindle & Keep and describes herself as “a clothier to the LGBTQ community”, began making bespoke suits for women after years of struggling to find clothes that suited her tomboy style. “I got used to wearing clothes that hid me,” she says. “Having this suit made for me basically reintroduced me to my body. I think people see me in a way that may actually align with how I see myself. Her success marks a growing demand for gender-neutral fashion – a style which almost completely disregards the gender of its wearer. “I think of what we do as gender-neutral,” Tutera told the Guardian. “It’s menswear for bodies menswear isn’t usually proportionate on.” And while Tutera’s work will be praised in the film, she acknowledges that gender is the latest bugbear in fashion’s historically tricky relationship with aspects of identity such as body shape and ethnicity, “[and] the constraints all of us have experienced around [them]”.Gender-neutrality is also a trend designer Craig Green alluded to with his autumn-winter 2014 show, which he describes as “romanticising” (among other things) “his signature for masculinity”. For the collection, Green – one of the biggest new names in menswear – dressed his models for his in matching ethnic tunics and skirts. Vivienne Westwood’s AW14 womenswear collection, meanwhile, was inspired by unisex pinup Tilda Swinton, and came with a predictably bohemian tagline from Westwood: “take beautiful pieces from your wardrobe or from that of your friend or partner and style together with your old favourites”. Even Selfridges has plans to expand into unisexwear in 2015, says Eleanor Robinson, its’ menswear buying manager: “women buying into menswear is a growing trend”, she explains, citing labels such as Hood By Air, Trapstar, Bazar-14 and KTZ as popular among women looking to de-gender their style. “There is also a female customer interested in a more masculine aesthetic and seeking out a true menswear fit – so a real ‘boyfriend’ jean, shirt or sweater.” And it works both ways: “We have also seen an emerging male customer profile that is extremely fashion-literate, shopping womenswear and women’s accessories.” The Flapper 1920s In the 1920s, a new woman was born. She smoked, drank, and voted. She cut her hair, wore make-up, and went to petting parties. She was giddy and took risks. She was a flapper. World War I started. The young men of the world were being used as cannon fodder for an older generation’s ideals and mistakes. The attrition rate in the trenches left few with the hope that they would survive long enough to return home. They found themselves inflicted with an “eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die spirit.” When the war was over, the survivors went home and the world tried to return to normalcy. Unfortunately, settling down in peacetime proved more difficult than expected. During the war, the boys had far away lands; the girls had bought into the patriotic fervor and aggressively entered the workforce. During the war, both the boys and the girls of this generation had broken out of society’s structure; they found it very difficult to return. Women were just as anxious as the men to avoid returning to society’s rules and roles after the war. In the age of the Gibson Girl which was before World War I, young women did not date; they waited until a proper young man formally paid her interest with suitable intentions (i.e. marriage). However, nearly a whole generation of young men had died in the war, leaving nearly a whole generation of young women without possible suitors. Young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood; they were going to enjoy life. The “Younger Generation” was breaking away from the old set of values. The “Flapper” The term “ flapper” first appeared in Great Britain after World War I. It was there used to describe young girls, still somewhat awkward in movement who had not yet entered womanhood. In the June 1922 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, G. Stanley Hall described looking in a dictionary to discover what the evasive term “flapper” meant: The dictionary set me right by defining the word as a fledging, yet in the nest, and vainly attempting to fly while its wings have only pinfeathers; and I recognized that genius of ‘slanguage’ had made the squab the symbol of budding girlhood. Flapper Image The Flappers’ image consisted of drastic – to some, shocking – changes in women’s clothing and hair. Nearly every article of clothing was trimmed down and lightened in order to make movement easier. It is said that girls “parked” their corsets when they were to go dancing. The new energetic dances of the Jazz Age, required women to be able to move freely, something the “ironside” didn’t allow. Replacing the pantaloons and corsets were underwear called “step-ins.” The outer clothing of flappers is even still extremely identifiable. This look, called “garconne” (“little boy”), was instigated by Coco Chanel. To look more like a boy women tightly wound their chest with strips of cloth in order to flatten it. The waists of flapper clothes were dropped to the hipline. She wore stockings – made of rayon (“artificial silk”) starting in 1923 – which flapper often wore rolled over a garter belt. In the 1920s, flappers broke away from the Victorian image of womanhood. They dropped the corset, chopped their hair, dropped layers of clothing to increase ease of movement, wore male-up, created the concept of dating, and became a sexual person. They created what many consider the “new” or “modern” woman. Marlene Dietrich 1930s With her cartoon eyebrows arching over her half-shut eyes and those sculpted cheekbones, German-born actress Marlene Dietrich was made for the screen. Working with director Josef von Sternberg, who knew just how to cast her pronounced features into graphic highlights and shadows for maximum drama, she filmed her biggest box-office hits in America between 1930 and 1935. In her later career, she worked with all-star directors Orson Wells, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Fritz Lang, among others. In Morocco, though, the costumes included one that became iconic--Marlene in a tuxedo. It was a shock to the public and made an enormous buzz when it came out. Keep in mind that these were the days in America when women did not really wear pants much less a mans tuxedo.  And not only did she don a tuxedo to do her singing, but she seduced two men while dressed like one--including the beautiful Gary Cooper--and also dared to kiss a woman in the audience during her number.  This was in the pre-Code days of Hollywood and allowed her to get away with being so bold. After around 1932, the censors would have never allowed that kiss on film. Marlene became known in Hollywood for wearing trousers quite often--both in real life and on film--and was absolutely stunning doing it.  Literally stunning, I should add. Ive heard a story of her at Bullocks Wilshire in white pants and matching overcoat and stunning the entire place into silence because she was so gorgeous walking into the department store. Many stars today have been inspired by this look...Sharon Stone quickly comes to mind. Modern designers, too, will often incorporate tuxedo pants into their collections for women now. Yves Saint Laurent was one of the first and famous for this look. 1. Mod Styles 1960s Mods: A Very British Style tells the definitive story of the movement that shaped Sixties music and fashion, says Mick Brown. The first mods were mostly art students or working-class teenagers in lowly clerical positions. They were narcissistic, hedonistic and avowedly consumerist. They had money to spend and challenged class strictures through dressing, dancing and having more fun than their elders and betters – as though style itself were a passport to upward mobility. They called themselves “faces”. Pete Townshend proved pithily accurate in 1968: “To be a mod you had to have short hair, money enough to buy a real smart suit, good shoes, good shirt; you had to be able to dance like a madman.”  By the mid-Sixties, “mod” had become an all-purpose adjective applied to anything young, fresh, unconventional and stylish – Mary Quant, Biba, the Beatles, Terence Conran and Habitat, Carnaby Street: the whole “Swinging London” cliché. 2. Mod Styles 1960s The beatnik style and Teddy Boys are noted as influences for the style. Most notably; miniskirts, bold colors and prints are all hallmarks of the style with models like Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy who personified the mod look. 1. Le Smoking 1960s From Marlene Dietrich’s top hat & tails in the 1930 film Morroco, to the headlines proclaiming “Garbo in pants!” whenever the Swedish actress was seen traipsing about on Hollywood Boulevard in trousers, women of the time were already, way back then, beginning to borrow pieces from their husbands’ closets. but it would not be for another 30 years that the look would finally take off, when one fateful day in 1966, an Algerian-born designer named Yves Saint Laurent created LE SMOKING, [French shorthand for black tie], which was comprised of a tuxedo suit of velvet or wool, and was, essentially, black-tie menswear reinterpreted. “For a woman, Le Smoking is an indispensable garment with which she finds herself continually in fashion, because it is about style, not fashion. Fashions come and go, but style is forever.” –Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking would not only a mark shift in fashion, but in power. In the words of Pierre Bergé, “It is a well-known fact that Chanel gave women their freedom; years later Saint Laurent brought them power.” 2. Le Smoking 1960s Even as late as 1966, the year in which Saint Laurent debuted le smoking in one of his couture shows, the concept of a woman in a tuxedo suit – traditionally the Rolls-Royce of men’s black-tie wear - ruffled feathers. “When Yves Saint Laurent’s smoking made its first appearance in an haute couture collection, it started a revolution. A man’s article of clothing thus became the symbol of female emancipation,” stated the press release for the 2005 exhibition Yves Saint Laurent Smoking Forever, which showcased the designer’s countless interpretations of the suit up to his retirement in 2002, from the dress version to the smoking jumpsuit and bolero. Power dressing Offering a sophisticated new attitude, le smoking, with its sharply tailored, minimalist lines, was the precursor to the power suit. Diane Keaton, Liza Minnelli, Charlotte Rampling, Lauren Bacall and Faye Dunaway figured among the constellation of strong women contributing to its myth. “This was a radical change for professional women, who could wear a practical suit which also looked elegant,” recalled Bianca Jagger in homage to Saint Laurent that ran in The Guardian in late 2008, a few months after the designer’s passing. A white Saint Laurent trouser suit became the signature style for Jagger, who donned a skirt and cream tuxedo jacket (with nothing underneath) by Saint Laurent for her wedding to Mick Jagger in 1971. “To see his influence you just have to look at the women who now wear trouser suits, influenced by his classic designs – everyone from Hillary Clinton to [former] French justice minister Rachida Dati. It was part of my liberation to be able to wear trouser suits because it makes life so easy.” Parting the sea of ubiquitous mermaid frocks, modern-day ambassadors, meanwhile, include Anne Hathaway, Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, Emma Watson, and Kim Kardashian. Speaking to the BBC, Violeta Sanchez explained that at the time, it was quite something for the stuffy bourgeois set to see women “take possession of man’s attire, and the freedom it gave her. It took her out of that spot where she was fragile.”  Sanchez is something of an expert, having played muse to the late German photographer Helmut Newton, whose powerful immortalisations of le smoking included the iconic 1975 Rue Aubriot series for French Vogue. “If Kate Moss and Angelina Jolie are wearing it, the new generation is going to be totally convinced,” commented Sanchez, whose evergreen penchant for smokings runs in the family. Posing alongside her mother, Sanchez’s 15-year-old daughter, Luz, was asked to model at the Autumn/Winter 2014 collection of Atelier Pallas, a niche, Paris-based label specialising in made-to-order smokings and smoking-inspired jackets and dresses. Sanchez remains a diehard ambassador for the garment, which has shaped her life story. “A smoking is a smoking; if it suits you, your problem is solved. You don’t need a gazillion dresses to choose from. And also, you’re not selling meat; you’re selling personality, charisma. It’s so right for now, because these people who do red carpets all the time, it’s like a dog chasing its tail. They don’t know what to show any more, or what colours to wear, and they end up looking quite terrible most of the time,” said Sanchez. “If they can get some sort of chic relief from a smoking suit, then why not? There is a lot you can do with a smoking.” Blitz Boys 1980s The Blitz Back in 1979 a little London club was the decadent birthplace of the ’80s. Most of the music and fashion we know from that decade had its roots in The Blitz.      Before its appropriation on regular Tuesdays by a gaggle of outrageously dressed former punks, hairdressers, soul boys, rockabillies and art students, The Blitz had been a normal enough wine bar in London’s Great Queen Street. When it was discovered by the owners and staff of PX, the capital’s hippest clothes store, its place in history was secured. Thanks to Steve Strange and ‘Princess’ Julia Fodor, and their friends and followers, The Blitz would become a hothouse for the mad flowering of creativity that swept London in the exciting years after punk and before house.      Punk was a very brief explosion. Almost more important was the energy and talent its DIY philosophy released. In its wake all manner of ordinary kids started following their dreams, becoming musicians, designers, writers, photographers, DJs and nightlife impresarios – careers that would have been unthinkable in the bleak ’70s. The Blitz managed to collect the most out-there of these former punks and became a churning, swirling home for new music, fashion, graphics and general outrageousness.      Youth cults had always had clear labels but no-one was sure what this lot were called. Were they ‘futurists’, ‘positive punks’, ‘New Romantics’ or simply ‘The Cult With No Name’? Not caring what anyone else thought – the Blitz kids challenged each other to new heights of fabulousness, applied stacks of make-up and looted history for dramatic looks – everything from erotic nuns to Lawrence of Arabia. The press frothed about ‘gender-bending’ as men in make-up – Boy George, Marilyn, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet – became pop stars. Remember that back then you could easily get beaten up simply for wearing a patterned shirt or a hat. Li Yuchun the Handsome: China’s Supergirl The June issue of China’s Elle Magazine, appearing on the fifth of May 2013, will be released with four different covers: all of them featuring China’s famous singer Li Yuchun, also known as Chris Lee. Li Yuchun had her major breakthrough in the 2005 version of ‘Supergirl’, a talent show similar to American Idol. Li, who currently has 2.621.730 followers on Weibo, has continued to be a hot topic on China’s (social) media. Part of her success is her boyish appearance – she is also referred to as ‘Brother Chun’ and is generally called ‘handsome’ instead of ‘pretty’. Li Yuchun has become more than the winner of a talent show; she has become a cultural phenomenon.  Since winning the nationwide talent show ‘Supergirl’ (Chaoji Nüsheng) and appearing on the cover of Time Magazine Asia in 2005, Li Yuchun has become a household name in China. Not only was she named one of ‘Asia’s Heroes’ by Time, she allegedly was also mentioned as one of China’s 50 most influential people by London think-tank Royal Institute of International Affairs along with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. As one of the biggest names in China’s music industry, Li is a national idol, pioneer and cultural phenomenon in multiple ways. Lastly, Li’s tomboy style has turned her into one of China’s most unique pop stars of all times. Li Yuchun’s stardom led to a huge dispute on the tomboy trend and sexuality, because it challenged the conventional Chinese criteria for feminine aesthetics and traditional gender norms among Chinese youths” Read More