Suit & Tired
Photography by: Dalton Lackey
Model: Emilie Bjerring
Menswear, as prolific as it is in today’s fashion lexicon, offers certain privileges and restrictions, depending on who’s wearing it. Here, Joel Calfee discuss the implications of this division of fashion.
My earliest childhood memories are characterized by cross-dressing. A plethora of home videos exist in which I am running around in makeshift dresses and scraggly wigs, and it is easy to catapult myself back to that time. I can clearly imagine myself wearing the tattered red heels that my mother bequeathed to me in order to properly realize the role of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. However, while I am able to reminisce fondly on these memories, they remain distinct as I get older and my passion for costuming becoming more ignominious.
Before I knew it, my chipped heels, tangled wigs, and stopgap dresses became reserved for Halloween only. Cross-dressing was cute when I was young but not acceptable as I grew older. No one in my family ever made this decree outright, but a stifling understanding hung in the air. I never received the opportunity to graduate to store-bought heels or dresses, and my interest in wearing pink, my favorite color at the time, was satiated solely with a t-shirt that proclaimed “Tough Guys Wear Pink.”
I did not grow up in a home where my zeal for flamboyant clothing was quelled. Rather, my parents were trying to protect me, and in a world where fashion is defined by immutable rules, they saw no other option besides guiding me along what they understood to be the safest path. Thus, I stayed within the realm of masculine antiquity throughout my youth, and my passion for fashion slowly decreased because of the cookie-cutter standard that was determined for men. While I witnessed Britney Spears wearing diamond bodysuits and Lady Gaga wearing meat dresses, the men were keeping it predictably conservative in their suits and ties.
Due to this discrepancy, I believed that fashion was an industry tailored exclusively to women. It seemed as if women were the ones who wore the captivating clothing and appeared more individually expressive. Yet, as I got older and my interest in fashion was reignited, I discovered that this female expression is permitted only with a forced element of peacocking. Men have developed standards of appearance that women are supposed to meet. Women are compelled to wear makeup, shave their legs, and dress expressively, while men are not. Fashion acts like a voyeuristic outlet, where hoards of male designers determine the way that women are supposed to appear by choosing what appeals to men.
On the flip side, this same collective of male creatives has regulated the way that men are supposed to dress. Masculinity is a fragile façade. But in order to maintain it, there must be an association between manliness and reticence. If I arrived at a black tie event wearing a dress with a waterfall of sequins flowing down my body, I would be renounced not only for flashiness, but for showing a level of public disrespect for an institution. For those who wish to maintain outdated definitions of masculinity, wearing backless dresses or fishnet stockings is like baring your neck to a razor blade.
Men are characterized by mainstream staples such as Polos and calf-length Nike socks, and when it comes to formal wear, their only option is the customary suit and tie. Male fashion is so reliably stagnant that when Jaden Smith wears a skirt for Louis Vuitton or Ezekiel Elliott transforms his dress shirt into a crop top for the NFL Draft Red Carpet, these minute steps seem monumental. While some sectors of the fashion industry claim to be progressive, they release laughable articles that state Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid borrowing each other’s t-shirts is “breaking gender codes.” Yet, some hope remains. The label Krammer & Stoudt announced that their fall 2018 collection for New York Men’s Fashion Week would be displayed using exclusively gender non-binary models, shattering the typical norm of gendered fashion weeks. But, while the definition of masculinity is slowly being reformulated, there is still a need for drastic change.
Many straight, white men fear the vulnerability that can come with ostentatious clothing, refusing to reveal themselves in the way they expect women to. Traditionally, masculine qualities in fashion come with a certain kind of power, but the fact of the matter is that they are insipid. If we begin to question the way those masculine qualities are presented and begin to dismantle them, we can eventually demolish the way that gender is presented in fashion altogether. In a perfect world, gender would be borderless. If I were to wear a dress to a business meeting or a wedding instead of a suit and tie, it would not be remotely notable. Unfortunately, this idealized world can seem unattainable. Moving toward this idyllic future is not simply a matter of buying a pair of ruby slippers and clicking them three times. Rather, it will require inclusive, collaborative effort at all levels of industry to embrace the feminine and reconstruct the definition of what it means to be a man. Tough guys may wear pink, but real men wear dresses.
Originally published in ROCKET Volume VIII, Issue 2