Part 1: Performance or Manipulation: A Study on Men’s Fashion

Through the Female Gaze

Read me first:

If you have a phone (ie. if you are reading this) or you have legs and have stepped outside in a major city, you are likely no stranger to the growing prevalence of men’s fashion.

Once lingering in the dust of women’s silhouettes and runway breaking color-ways, men’s prêt-à-porter is picking up steam faster than Aimé Leon Dore can pump out it’s freddo cappuccinos.

It led the Blasé gals to ask: have the tables turned? or at least equalized? is men’s fashion now melting under the female gaze?

In this four part series, we’ll be exploring our Blasé babe takes.

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Alyson on men’s per-figgity-formance:

I’m rewatching Bridgerton in preparation for the release of Season 3, and these high-society women are truly at the modiste 24/7. They need the newest fabric to be tailored into a fresh frock for the latest cotillion in order to catch the eye of potential suitors.

TBH, women have been using fashion in this way from the beginning of time to attract a partner. In my first ever Women’s Studies course in college (which led me to devote my studies to feminist theory), I read a quote by John Berger that has stuck with me to this day:

”Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”

So it’s not to say that men have not also been manipulating their appearance to find a partner, but rather that inscribed gender relations and the patriarchy writ large refract how and why men and women choose what they do when it comes to fashion.

Women have been conditioned to center their external appearance to appeal to the male gaze, to center their physical value on what a man thinks of it. Under this patriarchal haze, who are today’s Marcus Milione’s performing for? Is contemporary male fashion, resplendent with workwear jackets and chunky rings and painter pants (gorp core or blue collar stolen valor?) a costume or a uniform? Are men seeking to stand out or to fit in?

I was briefly seeing this guy who seemed to be fitting in to the male fashion corner of the zeitgeist that permeates every corner of New York City (well, mostly Bushwick). Our conversations were generally banal, yet I found his interest in fashion to be refreshing and exciting.

We weren’t talking about Sandy Liang or Paloma Wool, which I know are still barely scratching the surface in terms of the indie haute couture scene. But he had his Carhartt beanie in his jacket pocket, an affinity for “gorpy” sneakers, and was donning some baggy Kith jeans along with a navy J Crew sweater.

I was swooning, what can I say? An interest in fashion, inherently a female-coded pursuit, segues beautifully into the new soft boy, the golden retriever boyfriend, the “man that is in touch with his feelings but probably only went to therapy once and tells you about it every day.” Was he trying hard, or being effortlessly cool?

All I can tell you is that a man caring about fashion does not mean he is a soft boi who is in touch with his emotions, but rather that he may be extremely avoidant and can’t dive deeper on fashion beyond letting you know that “that outsole is adorable!”.

But hey. Regardless of why men are utilizing fashion as currency and for who, we all can appreciate a man that cares about his appearance, whether he is doing it to appeal to women or to seek social acceptance from other men and society at large as the definition of masculinity contorts in the 21st century.

My personal fav male fashion archetype at the moment is this guy who came up on my explore page months ago and is still living rent free in my brain.

Cheers to weekend blasé babes. xx

P.S. Some questions for you and da crew to discuss over your 1pm spritzes this weekend:

As women increasingly try to decenter men in the way that they present themselves and behave (as much as we can under the patriarchy):

• Are men trying to move into that space?

• Is interest in this kind of mainstream male fashion a performance in wanting to be different or wanting to fit in and be considered “cool”?

• Is being different the new way to be accepted into a different stratum of sameness?

• Do men recognize the social capital that caring about culture and fashion yields?