Bachelor's thesis project
“Fashion Masculinity” comes from the exhibition held in the London V&A museum in 2022, relating about the masculinity declinations among time through the designer’s eyes, and showing how masculinity stands nowadays in the center of a real revolution.
The aim of my study is to highlight how masculinity has been shaped to date with the aim of defining itself with a new representation, far from the gender labels and the idea of masculine virility and superiority, giving life to a great revolution.
The starting point was to give a definition to the word masculinity, and, through an anthropological and sociological study I noticed how this definition is strictly linked to cultural issues.
Afterwards, I focused on the analysis of the first distinctions between male and female fashion throughout history, setting as a timing of maximum fashion gender gap the ‘800, during the birth of the British bourgeois in industrial revolution.
From the ‘60s, standards of masculinity started to change, with the subculture and young revolution advent, which had a crucial role in overturning the western aesthetics.
These changings had their reflection in fashion too, being shown through some revolutionary designers who told their own male conception, disclosing the aesthetic revolution, which was fundamental for the surface of a nowadays masculinity. Such personalities embracing this new vision were Jean-Paul Gaultier, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, as well as new magazines such as i-D, The Face, Dazed and Confused.
During the 90s, a new male sensuality takes over, thanks to designers such as Tom Ford, Hedi Slimane and Raf Simons, and photographers such as Corinne Day e David Sims. These changings brought to the redefinition of masculinity concept and meaning, setting in the actual society and designer new visions the elimination of a clear distinction between male and female, and the development of a genderless, pleged to all humans, fashion. Among the multiple personalities bringing up this decade revolution, Rick Owens, Johnanatan Anderson, Alessandro Michele and Stefano Pilati can be reminded.
https://freight.cargo.site/m/N2205551741275433530691672178839/Tesi-EDOARDO-BARBERA-Fashioning-Masculinity.pdf
Edoardo Barbera