The Male Closet Is Queerer Than Ever
A couple of weeks ago, on my way home, I saw a young man wearing a jacket. It had a gold chain print, kind of like 90’s Versace. He was coming out of the super market, got on his bike and left.
He was the third person I had seen recently wearing something like that. A general rule on fashion is that if you see something twice, it’s a coincidence. If you see it three times though, it’s a trend. I wasn’t really preoccupied with what’s the next big and hot thing for this summer but more about how the visual signature of a house associated with a camp aesthetic had become something so ordinary. Nothing special.
Camp, as we have vividly seen on a previous story about the 2019 Met Gala, is also closely associated with the LGBTQI* community and queerness in general. I may be digressing but what I mean to say is that I don’t really think that boy with the jacket was something random. For I believe that men’s clothes are changing again. Not so much aesthetically, as a fad that will be off-season by next year, but substantially. Decades of protests and fights for equal rights on behalf of the feminist and LGBTQI* movements are showing results, socially, politically — and yes, even sartorially. In other words, while we are trying to redefine the male identity today, we will also end up talking about what that man wears, one way or another.
By saying that the male closet (pun intended) is queerer than ever, I mean that we can already see that the stringent codes of the male wardrobe are loosening up. They are influenced by elements that were considered “feminine”; androgynous and queer. Gucci’s designer, Alessandro Michele is the most prominent example. Within a few years, his eclectic collections have managed to move fashion’s needle to a reality that’s not as rigid but more fluid and diverse, where all that matters is your character instead of your gender. The fact that his queer vision has found fertile ground in a house of over $7 b. per year is no small feat.
Our beloved celebrities have also started experimenting with their clothes. Musicians and actors dare to wear something more than a plain old black suit or jeans. Hip hop and rap today has become a hotpot of stylistic creativity. Dyed hair, furs and jewellery, the latest looks from Paris Fashion Week, lyrics like “I see both sides like Chanel”, even a casual dress on an album cover — fashion had been a field reserved only for women or gay men. Today, it is used proudly as a currency of originality and uniqueness. Young kids growing up with such visual influences is also something that should not escape us.
On the other hand, the world isn’t made of sugar, as queer as it may want to be. By growing the male closet, you end up with extra space for more clothes, more shoes, even more accessories. Which company would refuse to be the one who will fill up that space with the appropriate cost? And which company will stop at just that? Why men, like women all these years, can’t have new needs? Cosmetics and grooming, for example. And why can’t they actually create the new ideal that men will have to adhere to today? If tomorrow’s masculinity has a fatter wallet than yesterday, nobody will prevent it from coming. They will make sure they pave a brand new road, toll free, to come even earlier.
And let’s just not stay only in men’s fashion. Last week, New York published a revealing article on how “incels” (straight men who are unwillingly single — involuntary celibates) are alarmingly led to facial cosmetic surgery in order to score mode dates. The most interesting part in the article is that the facial features they’re asking for “is still masculine, but now they want a dash of the feminine, too. It’s breathtaking bone structure with prominent, full lips. […] [they] are headed in androgynous directions.” The male gaze is blowing up on men’s face, literally and figuratively.
I’m close to 700 words and a story on Medium isn’t enough to cover everything. Yes, we are all slowly realising that the limits we had imposed on ourselves don’t serve us anymore. Abolishing them, however, may be pregnant with new types of limits. In any case, a jacket with a gold chain print is a jacket with a gold chain print, any way you look at it. It’s worth mentioning though because we still categorize clothes into menswear and womenswear with myopic accuracy. Maybe a queerer closet can help us see a little better.
A version of this article originally appeared on The Naked Report’s 6 June 2019 newsletter with the title: “Η αντρική ντουλάπα είναι πιο κουήρ από ποτέ”. Edited and translated from Greek to English by Christos Mouchas.
