In Clothing Fit Issues For Trans People, Reilly, Catalpa and McGuire “surmise that transgender people will critique their ‘look’ based on their interaction between their apparel and their bodies in the context of social-constructs of gender presentation.” Looking at the Function, Expressive and Aesthetic Consumer Needs Model, and interviewing members of the trans community, they deduced that the RTW mass market was falling short in providing clothing that met the function and aesthetic, the fit and design needs of a trans person. I see Rihanna’s latest Savage x Fenty fashion show not as a fix to the problem but perhaps as a step in the right direction.   Rihanna opens the show explaining that, “every woman deserves to feel sexy.  We are sexy, we are multi-faceted and I want women to embrace that to the fullest.”  These are not just words, but a value that she laid out in the casting of the show. The Savage x Fenty show showcased women of all different shapes, and sizes including notable women from the LGBTQ++ community, Richie Shazam (gender non-binary), Laverne Cox (trans woman), Isis King (born in the wrong body), and Acquaria (drag queen).  Rihanna is showing the world that her line of lingerie is for everybody, that it has been designed using the functional-expressive-aesthetic model, functional pieces that fit a wide range of sizes and body shapes, expressive with their inclusive, self-loving, everyone is sexy messaging, and aesthetic, by positively influencing the way women embrace their bodies. NY Fashion Week is not new to male-to-female trans models, but what is progressive about the Savage x Fenty show, is that it is an affordable RTW lingerie line, it is not couture or a luxury brand where the fashion show is not realistic to what will be presented to the masses.  When you look at the brands website, the diversity that was presented in the show is apparent, not only through the models, but through the wide range of styles and sizes offered at the retail level.  The hope is that as Savage x Fenty, and other gender inclusive brands and companies, claim the spotlight that other brands and retailers see the need to consider trans women not only as models but as consumers, and that this realization will increase the options that we all have on the retail floor.  

https://www.bustle.com/p/rihannas-savage-x-fenty-2019-fashion-show-redefined-sexy-through-unapologetically-diverse-casting-18789869

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-week/a29143403/rihanna-savage-fenty-show-2019-reactions-reviews/

https://www.savagex.com/

“Clothing Fit Issues for Trans People” by Reilly, Catalpa, and Mcguire (2019) and “Pocketing the Difference: Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth-Century Britain” by Burman (2002) are academic studies focused on the limitations of dress in relation to gender. Dress in both studies refers to clothing where functionality and utility are needed. For Reilly et al (2019), function is defined by fit and comfort, while Burman (2002) is on the availability and use of pockets for storage on the body. Although the type of clothing discussed in these studies differ in size, gender plays an important role for both. Both subjects are minorities (compared to cisgender and male persons) who need clothing that conceals. Concealment for Reilly et al (2019), is clothing that allows the wearer to ‘pass’ in public as their gender identity. For Burman (2002), concealment is to have pockets that provide storage without obstructing the wearer’s comfort and silhouette. However, concealment was/is not a concrete need for both studies. The Reilly et al (2019) study included persons who do not solely conform to one gender through their clothing and Burman (2002) included texts that discussed how certain styles of pockets were too indiscrete and small for women.

Both studies used qualitative methods for methodology. Reilly et al (2019) sourced interviews from a large pool of subjects and Burman (2002) incorporated historical materials, including writings made by women, to find and explain a phenomenon. Through these methods, the scholars sourced a problem in dress. Also provided were better understandings of two consumer groups who have and do participate in the fashion industry.

Prompts

Clothing Fit Issues for Trans People

1) “Clothing fit (dis)satisfaction stems from …” (Fit and Sizing Systems, para. 2)

2) “A transgender person’s physique is in different stages of development during …” (Transgender People’s Body Image, para. 5)

3) “The Functional, Expressive and Aesthetic (FEA) Consumer Needs Model (Lamb & Kallal, 1992) provides the framework …” (Framework, para. 1)

4) “Participants were recruited via advertisements …” (Method, para. 4)

5) “This research should be considered in light of its limitations …” (Conclusion, para. 2)

Pocketing the Difference: Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth-Century Britain

6) “The principal elements of men and women’s experience of pockets …” (pg. 448, para. 2)

7) “The pocket advantage over women which was enjoyed by men had …” (pg. 454, para. 3)

8) “By the later nineteenth century the hands-on ….” (pg. 456, para. 3)

9) “Moving on now from possessions to the gendered body itself …” (pg. 460, para. 2)

10) “It can be argued that the suggestive qualities of concealed and visible

pockets echoed …” (pg. 463, para. 3)

Macaronis were a fashion subgroup that challenged hetero-normative male dressing through the wearing of pastel-colored silks and towering powdered wigs. As Macaronis found influence in both aristocratic and middle-class circles, public outrage towards the group materialized in satirical writings and illustrations. McNeil (2000) writes that this criticism transitioned the group from a subculture to “the realm of caricature … the style was, in the end, deemed unhealthy and a threat to masculinity itself ” (pg. 1; 2). 

This notion of the public making fun of a male-based fashion subculture did not end with the Macaronis. During the mid-Aughts, male hipsters became societal fodder for their groomed beards, beanies, and “man buns,” or hair tied into a bun style. In How the song Yankee Doodle was about obnoxious 18th-century hipsters (2015), a comparison between Maracronis and male hipsters were drawn. The article’s writer Phil Edwards explains, “But let’s be honest. Weird clothes? Jokes about masculinity and sexual experimentation? … Macaronis were annoying hipsters … Powdered wigs were the man buns of the 18th century” (para. 9; 12). Despite a 200+ year difference between the two groups, it appears that Western culture is still unease towards male fashion expression. 

Sources:

Edwards, Phil. (2015, Sept. 13). Yankee Doodle was about obnoxious 18th-century hipsters. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2015/9/13/9312147/macaronis-yankee-doodle. 

McNeil, Peter,  “Mocking the macaroni: Fashion Victims of 18th-century England” Rotunda(Vol. 32, Issue 3.) Mar. 22, 2000

Both Glamour and Making the Suit Zoot examine fashion’s relationship with gender and sexuality. After reading Wissinger’s Judith Butler, I understand that they both discuss how power and culture transform the marginalized and reshape individual and group identities. While Glamour explores the written and imaged of glamour, Making the Suit Zoot traces the material history of zoot suit and focuses on how zoot suit emerged from the creative process between manufacturers, retailer, and customers. Judith Butler: Fashion and Performativity reviews Butler’s studies on body, clothing, and power. The Judith Butler chapter suggests clothing and the body project the structures of power. It is important to take a close look at the social and cultural dynamics that shape glamour or zoot suit. The concept of performativity helps me to understand dandyism in Glamour and masculinity in Making the Suit Zoot: first, I have to acknowledge that body is a mixture of both the psychic and the material, and I can find “a repetition with a difference” in the making of glamour or that of zoot suit. Making the Suit Zoot covers so many agencies in the history of zoot suit, including manufacturers, retailers, advertisers, government, and customers. It depicts the whole image of the fashion industry in the mid-20^th century U.S. Although this chapter has some statistics, many arguments seem to become too general about the economic status of American families. This chapter reveals the collaborative and interactive nature of the creation of a style, which reflects the power dynamics in the society. Glamour starts with searching for the origins and marks of glamour in literature, fine arts, and cinema. Wilson also locates “glamour” and its connection with darkness in contemporary fashion with a reference to Caroline Evans’s Fashion at the Edge. However, the effort to define celebrity and distinguish glamour from celebrity seem weak. Wissinger’s Judith Butler chapter proves how valuable and fundamental Butler’s work is to fashion studies and queer studies. It is worth noting that she clarifies readers’ confusion over “performativity”, which is essential to understand the gendered body. The section which explains why psychoanalysis is not enough suggests that we need a framework that incorporates the analysis of psyche, material, and many more to understand complex identity constructions, such as those in Glamour and Making the Suit Zoot. The discussion on Butler’s “linguistic turn” reminds us to pay attention to re-signification and how meanings and power are shifted, which both Glamour and Making the Suit Zoot also discuss in their contexts.

Writing Prompts

Wilson, Glamour

1. “Yet glamour is not about consumption in the consumer society, although te word has come to be continually misused…” p.98

2. “For glamour is elitist…” p.100

3. “The contrast could be formulated more theoretically.” P.101

Peiss, Making the Suit Zoot

4. “During these years, the menswear trade as a whole became a more style-conscious industry…” p. 22

5. “Most significant for the zoot suit was the practice of semi-custom tailoring…” p.30

6. “Style was a consideration, even with respect to men’s clothes…” p.34-35

Wissinger, Judith Butler

7. “Butler used the concept of ‘performativity’ to analyze the ontological origins of gender itself…” p. 287

8. “Fashion is among the regimes that give bodies intelligibility…” p. 291

9. “That ‘something important’ threads through Butler’s attempts to situate bodily practices in the specific social and historical…” p.292

10. “Thinking through fashion via Butler blurs the line between clothing and the body, and idea that has become critical within…” p. 294-295

In Peter McNeil’s piece “Mocking the macaroni: fashion victims of 18th-century England” and Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello’s text “The art and science of walking: gender, space, and the fashionable body in the long eighteenth century,” there is a discussion of fashion that revolves around adornment as a practice that produces and forms national identity. This conversation specifically centers the exchanges between France and England during the long eighteenth century. Both articles address the evolution of men’s fashion, the resulting division between how aristocratic men and women dress, and how this influences how gender identity is constructed. While “Mocking the macaroni” offers more insight into the reception of the macaroni trend and how it was adopted, resented, consumed by and made accessible to people over time, “The art and science of walking” offers readers insight into and contextualizes how environment, culture, health, and gender both construct and are constructed by fashion (McNeil and Riello 2). I enjoyed using these two pieces to think through my own project, specifically the relationship between fashion and manufactured spaces and how that relationship affects mobility. I am also invested in how both texts speak about silk (as an oriental material), and how changing ideas of hygiene influenced a shift away from certain textiles (like silk). The disposability of silk is also of interest to me, as there are several accounts of people throwing silk away within both texts, and what this implies for perceptions toward the East and the Asian subject. These pieces continue to shape my growing knowledge and understanding of Fashion Studies literature, thinking through these texts alongside Ellen Sampson’s projects reveals the multiple entry points into thinking and theorizing about the body through its reciprocal (though hierarchical) relationship with (and to) clothing.

Writing Prompts
“The art and science of walking: gender, space, and the fashionable body in the long eighteenth century”
“This article will focus on English dress…” (McNeil and Riello 1)
“By focusing on France and Britain, this article develops two…” (McNeil and Riello 2)
“By the early nineteenth century Paris…” (McNeil and Riello 2)
“The complexity of such historical discourse regarding the relationship between the body and fashion…” (McNeil and Riello 7)
“The physicality of the body, the action of walking…” (McNeil and Riello 8)
“Mocking the macaroni: fashion victims of 18th-Century:
“Derived from contemporary French and Italian fashion…” (McNeil 1)
“Interest in elaborate clothing would have been further…” (McNeil 2)
“By virtue of their flamboyant dress and behavior…” (McNeil 2)
“The late 18th Century was a time of rapid transformation…” (McNeil 2)
“The notion of moderation was thus embraced as …” (McNeil 3)

Fashion has always been gendered and in the beginning of fashion studies there was a line between what is considered “male” and “female” clothes. With the emergence of the 20^th century certain styles and attitudes towards fashion shifted gears, especially with the rise of the LGBTQ community into the mainstream consciousness. In Kathy Preiss’ chapter “The Making of the Zoot Suit”, fashion and masculinity are intertwined with the creation of the zoot suit. Most of the men wearing zoot suits were African American or Hispanic coming from working class backgrounds. The zoot suit was a bridge between “desire and necessity, an ideal fashioned from combinations of old clothes, hand-me-downs, and clothes bought a size or two too big.” (Peiss, pg.32) Clothing is used to exhibit a certain allure or glamour about an individual and introduction of the zoot suit allowed men to become more flamboyant. Traditional male clothes previously had a more tailored look and the zoot suit signified a change in male dressing. If both men and women could wear loose clothing, one garment cannot define gender identity. Androgynous attire, which came later, redefined how clothes are worn and marketed. The LGBTQ and non-binary communities opened the door in the 1960s to the idea of free gender expression in clothing and presentation. Today clothes are still marketed towards the two main genders, however there is a change to be more inclusive to those who do not identify as male or female. The real marker of change will be if gender neutral clothing will be accepted as a staple or seen as counterculture.  

The Phluid Project: https://thephluidproject.com 

What we wear, how we wear it, as well as when and where we wear it develops a narrative around the identification and representation of ourselves. The imagery created facilitates a silent conversation between us and the outside world. Fashion and style are the tools that we use in the creation of the conversation, telling our choices, thoughts, and aspirations; who we are and who we desire to be. In this conversation with the outside world, we are both influencer and influenced in a perpetual cycle of change that fashion has come to represent. In “The Object and Art of Luxury Consumption” and the excerpt from “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” fashion is discussed from alternate perspectives as a means of influencer and influenced, personal identification and representation, and consumer consumption. “The Object and Art of Luxury Consumption” emphasizes the role of haute couture, luxury lifestyle, and luxury as art in a top-down system which contrasts with the bottom-up system of punk and counterculture fashion, as discussed in “Subculture: The Meaning of Style”. Ultimately, whether top-down or bottom-up fashion, both approaches may lead to mass consumption which, although contrary to their original roots, is important because of the eventual influence on the wider culture, ideas around fashion, and the impact on other industries.

• The Object and Art of Luxury Consumption
  1. (Pg. 108-109) From another perspective… they can enjoy or desire.
  2. (Pg. 109) The contemplation of luxuries… provide them for others.
  3. (Pg. 113) The expansion of the luxury market… and the bespoke luxury market.
  4. (Pg. 117) W. J. T. Mitchell (1996, 2005) asks the question ‘What do pictures want?’… economic and cultural senses.
  5. (Pg. 119) In their study of luxury bands,… but also to the mass market.
• Subculture: The Meaning of Style
  1. (Pg. 102-103) The subcultures with which… forbidden meaning.
  2. (Pg. 107) Objects borrowed from… were valued intrinsically.
  3. (Pg. 111) If these ‘success stories’… sympathetic retail outlets.
• The Field of Fashion (from TTF)
  1. (Pg. 245-246) This consecration…
  2. (Pg. 245) The ideals of authenticity…