The beginning of twentieth-century Paris saw fashion become as
equally liberated as it was oppressed. Whereas on one end of the
spectrum Charles Frederick Worth was paving the way to the future by
becoming the first ever ‘designer’ to print his name onto his
designs, on the other end the main fashion of the day was at the
height of its role as the oppressor of the female physique. Female
fashion tussled between long, loose fitting dresses taking the favour
of one side, and caricature-like wasp-waists taking that of the
other. Whereas the former style allusively disguised the contours of
the body, the latter accentuated them into an idyllic extreme of the
hourglass figure. Both styles, however, succeeded in covering the
body from head to toe and concealing the true shape of the figure
that lay below, forcing the twentieth-century female identity into
one of ambiguity and intrigue.
Elsewhere, the men’s fashion of the century was rigorously uniformed
into The Gentleman persona, where the juxtaposition of trousers with
shirts and jackets allowed the male anatomy to be separated into its
upper and lower counterparts. This succeeded in liberating the male
physique with some defining boundaries whereas, for the full-length
attires of the linear or curvaceous woman, there were none.
However, with women becoming envious of the comfort their male
counterparts seemed to achieve in their accepted fashions, the quest
for female liberation began, starting on the stage. French actress
Sarah Bernhardt questioned the contemporary female identity by
donning the tapered trousers of designer Amelia Bloomer, who was
ridiculed elsewhere for her attempts to bring the comfort of male
fashion into the stringent femininity of womenswear. Sidonie-
Gabrielle Colette transcended the gender-specific boundaries even
further by kissing women, wearing men’s clothing and liberating the
female figure by appearing half naked on stage. These admirable acts
of defiance continued to develop throughout the years, weaving their
way into an infamous history of liberation and feminism that reached
its pinnacle somewhere between the swinging 1960s and the audacious 1980s.
As boundaries were pushed, the contours of the body were revealed,
with iconic photographers such as Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and
Deborah Turbeville all exposing their female subjects to a
questionably pornographic level. Although some have been quick to
accuse such photographers of objectifying women by succumbing purely
to male fantasies, it is clear that the intimacies of the female
physique are no longer the forbidden entities that once lay beneath
the ambiguous contours of early twentieth century fashion.
With high fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier blurring the
boundaries between masculine and feminine identities, street fashion
began to challenge the divisions between the acceptable and the
unacceptable. Waist lines were lowered, neck lines delved deeper
south and skirts became shorter, culminating in a society that not
only embraces sex as an open topic, but continues to push it as the
driving force behind our social personas. Now, as the new generation
of designers take precedence in London Fashion Week, there is an
emergence of collections that seek to fight the modern image of
scantily clad girls and promiscuous boys, and take inspiration from
our modest roots.
J. JS Lee seems to be one of the designers at the forefront of this
movement, where both SS11 and AW11/12 womenswear collections
incorporate longer lengths into their designs, challenging the
contours of the body and returning to an ambiguous sexual identity.
Here, dresses and oversized tops run in an unbroken linearity from
neck to knees, neglecting the curves that lie below. Trousers paired
underneath the skirts continue the linearity of the designs whilst
creating an androgynous element that is comparable to J W Anderson’s
infusion of the garments in his AW11 menswear and womenswear
collections.
However, we must ask, are the collections of such designers in danger
of neglecting the sexual identities that their predecessors fought so
hard to liberate? Or are they simply initiating a new ideal; an ideal
where menswear and womenswear for once begin to move in unison?
Perhaps by defying the typically “masculine” or “feminine” contours
of the body, we are not reverting back to a lack of identity, but
merely creating a new state in which our identities can be drawn from
elements in either end of the gender spectrum. A blurred boundary of
sexual identity, if you will.
