BBC article: Will Men wear skirts and lace?

[Milfmog]

I was doing one of my occasional trawls through a search engine when I came across this link:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201306 ... s-and-lace

Annoyingly, I can not access it because

BBC Worldwide (International Site)
We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at http://www.bbcworldwide.com.

Can any of the folks outside the UK see the article? If so could someone copy and post it here or provide a synopsis?

Have fun,


Ian.

[Stu]

Ian - it is mainly high-end fashion stuff. There are a couple of elaborate skirts shown in the photos, but they are mainly of lace. The looks are, IMO, quite effeminate.

The text reads as follows:

Some fashion trends sneak up on you. Others ring out loud and clear. Last week, as the Spring ’14 menswear shows kicked off in London, one trend sounded with all the subtlety of an air horn: androgyny is the new black.

The most forceful expression of this theme came from up-and-coming brand JW Anderson. The five-year-old label comprises collections for men and women, and designer Jonathan Anderson likes to overlap the look of the two. Last season, for instance, Anderson showed pairs of ruffled shorts for men much like the ones in his Spring ’13 womenswear collection. And this time, Anderson’s dominant silhouette was a lean tunic paired with fluid, elongated trousers, another shape he’d begun to articulate in his previous womenswear show. But the look that got eyebrows arching and tongues wagging was Anderson’s male halter top: backless, semi-sheer and floral patterned, the look was unavoidably effeminate. “Atrocious,” sneered The Daily Mail.

Anderson is upfront about the fact that he likes testing the boundaries between men’s and women’s clothes. But he insists that he’s not setting out to create controversy; for him, the gender-bending emerges organically, out of formal risk-taking.

“In a way, it’s funny that people had such a strong reaction to that look,” Anderson tells me. “I mean, that top started as a long raglan mac. And then we cut the sleeves off, and then we made it short. When you’re in the studio,” he goes on, “that kind of experimentation feels normal. In fact, it’s the point. You’re playing with a piece of fabric, trying to create a new line, a new proportion. But then you present that to the world, on a runway, and it becomes this ‘thing.’”

Stu

[crfriend]

Thanks for re-posting that, Stu. I would likely have otherwise missed it.

(Quoting BBC Worldwide) “I feel like we’ve been in a really conservative moment,” notes Martine Rose, another London-based menswear designer who tests gender conventions with her clothes. “It’s so lazy, this way of thinking – that ‘real’ men wear this, but not that. I was really influenced by [funk musician] Rick James, for this collection,” she continues, “and he was so sexy, so gangster, and wearing ruffled shirts and thigh-high red boots. He wasn’t letting his clothes define his sexuality. Or his masculinity.”

I'm beginning to perceive the time we're in as the beginning of a new Dark Age. Extremism and intolerance are encroaching dangerously into our world and we seem powerless to stem the tide -- and it's even apparent in the clothing we wear.

“Footballers back in the seventies, they used to wear those little shorts,” Rose muses. “No one was questioning their manliness; other guys wanted to look like them, in fact. And they were sexy, those footballers. They had the confidence to show their bodies, and to be playful.”

This one thought speaks volumes. We had a very bright spot for style and experimentation in the '60s and '70s, and when the neoconservatism of the 1980s emerged all that was utterly destroyed. Yes, the experiments sometimes produced ridiculous results -- but when one is carrying out experiments that's sometimes what happens. It's the very nature of the beast; if one it to try something new and possibly unknown, sooner or later one is bound to "get it wrong" sometimes repeatedly before "getting it right".

I don't buy the notion of androgeny; it's perfectly possible to wear interesting fabrics and clothing and still look absolutely masculine. When I put on some of my fancier stuff I am not doing so to be anybody -- or anything -- other than myself, and I'm not exactly the "sensitive New Age guy" (which I think by now is a dead ideal, having been killed off by humour columnists the world over).

[Milfmog]

Thanks for posting that Stu.

It was actually quite an interesting article. Like Carl, I remain more than a little sceptical about the mainstream emergence of androgyny as a fashion for the masses. However, it is interesting to read that a number of influential fashion houses are seeing a need to soften the boundaries of male fashion and introduce more choice into what is regarded as "acceptable".

Thanks again and have fun,


Ian.