fashion-and-the-body

Does fashion reflect or construct our attitudes to either gender or the body or sexuality?

(ABSTRACT)

Figure 1. Chesterfield Cigarette advertisement (1925) 1stDibs

Victor Magritte’s 1922 novel ‘La Garçonne’—“about a young ‘modern woman’ who rejects her family, cuts her hair, adopts male dress, and leads a hedonistic and ‘liberated’ life in Paris” (Roberts, 1993, pg. 659)—helped construct the new feminine ideal for many, reaching millions of readers worldwide (Terret, 2002). Indeed, the Garçonne style of the 1920s, equally inspired by the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (1925), Hollywood vapishness, and the thin, tanned, and sporting female figure (Breward, 1995), began to reconstruct ideas around the traditional gender norm. New short hairstyles, such as the ‘Eton crop’, “represented all that society feared about the modern woman”, and contrasted the long held association with long hair and femininity (Fogg, 2013, pg. 227). Similarly, the chemise dress, with its loose-fitting form and shortened hemline, gave women the freedom of movement not widely experienced during the previous century (Woodcock, 2013): the ‘What will Paris wear?’ feature in the August 1920 edition of Harper’s Bazaar dismissing ‘bouffant drapery’ in favour of a slim silhouette (Harper’s Bazaar, 1920). Women’s dress began to represent how the female body actually felt to its owner, rather than conforming to the restrictive social ideal (Hollander, 2016). Despite the supposed sartorial emancipation, it has been suggested that the ‘Garçonne’ was less wide reaching than first assumed, as it was a style largely reserved for editorials, and those living elite and metropolitan lifestyles (Breward, 1995). Furthermore, the increasingly masculine appearance adopted by women was still viewed as deeply controversial, marked by those critical of the change as a “feminine plot against male power” (Thébaud cited in Terret, 2002, pg. 275).

Similarly, sport provided women with another outlet in which to express themselves, and in the tennis world, where women were previously expected to play in modest and restrictive forms of dress (Horwood, 2004 cited in Ya-Lei Yen, 2014), this notion was exemplified by French player Suzanne Lenglen. The image above, an advertisement for Chesterfield Cigarettes dating 1925, is evocative of Lenglen’s 1921 Wimbledon ensemble by Jean Patou: a knee-length skirt, sleeveless cardigan, and headband (Polan and Tredre, 2009). “Her presence was charismatic and ran counter to prior “feminine” values of restraint […] Lenglen fully embodied the idea of the liberated, active woman, and her fashion choices were a visible extension of her spirit and tenacity” (Museum at FIT, 2014). Patou’s sportswear not only reflected her needs on the court—the success of the game relying on a player’s agility and ease of movement—but she also set the precedent for the success of her female successors in the modern sport. Comparably, reflecting the spirit of Lenglen's sartorial breakthrough in the previous decade, the start of the 1930s saw the creation of the Women's League of Health and Beauty, whose moto, "movement is life" (cited in Matthews, 1990, pg. 25), was reflected in the design of their uniforms. "[The uniform’s] briefness allowed for freedom of movement and encouraged what founder Mary Bagot Stack referred to as ‘skin-airing’, a cleansing process she believed was best executed in the nude” (VAM, n.d.). In part, it was the freedom provided by twentieth century sportswear that allowed women to participate and compete to a higher level, thus altering—although somewhat slowly—the enduring perception that they were simply incapable.

Figure 2. Gladys Bently embracing Louis Armstrong (1952) Ebony Magazine

A singer, pianist and entertainer performing at their height during the Harlem Renaissance, Gladys Bentley constructed her personal and sexual identity through the clothing she wore. Alongside her musical talent, Bently was renowned for her masculine attire, often appearing in “tailor-made clothes, top hat and tails, with a cane to match each costume, stiff-bosomed skirt, wing collar tie and matching shoes” (Bentley, 1952 cited in Kasik, 2016, pg. 94). Writing in 1952 Bentley stated that “I have violated the accepted code of morals […] yet the world has tramped to the place where I have performed to applaud my piano playing and song styling” (Bentley, 1952). Yet, whilst Bentley made her name as a male impersonator she did not seek to pass as male, instead exerting a “black female masculinity” that blurred the boundaries between masculinity and femininity: continuing to wear makeup throughout, and wearing skirts for the first few years of her performing career (Wilson, 2010 cited in Church, 2018, pg. 20). Furthermore, the discriminatory political climare of the 1950s, overrun by the McCarthy era

during which members of the LGBTQ+ community were accused of communist sympathies (Kasik, 2016), saw her publically return to wearing traditional female dress. Published in Ebony magazine in August of 1952, Bentley’s article ‘I am Woman Again’ claimed that she was ‘weeping’ and ‘wounded’, and had been travelling down the wrong road (Bentley, 1952). Contrary to her famous appearance of white suit, top hat and cane, the photograph above (Fig. 2) shows Bentley wearing a dress, with flowers in her braided hair 'embracing Louis Armstrong’. One of the many images in the article depicting her in ‘normal’ feminine clothing, the image emphasises her connection to heterosexuality and reclaimed feminine identity (Kasik, 2016), Butler asserting in her study that gender is a performance of social convention, and is to be played out through the ways in which we act and dress (Butler, 1999).

Back to Abstracts