I read an interesting research article earlier today that focused on the questions: Do men and women differ in their fulfillment of the roles as fashion designer? And if women can be assumed to have more of an intuition into the social shifts and influences on their gender, why have men historically dominated the industry?
The author began by discussing the different approaches to carrying out the role of designer, from the approach of the craftsman (Coco, Bill Blass) to the avant-guardist (Hussein Chalayan, Elsa Schiaparelli). Here's a few highlights, y'all:
In talking about postmodern designers, the article talks about Rei Kawakubo (of Comme des Garcons) whose "Machines for making her clothes were deliberately manipulated so that what they produced was flawed."
"Her designs were viewed as social statements, as oblique references to the clothes of homeless women and as veiled attacks on the decadence of Western fashion. The simulation of poverty in luxury fashion design represents a commentary on the opulence of fashion at this level, exemplified by the use of expensive materials, embroidery that requires hundreds of hours of labor for a single garment, and the reappearance of trains with evening dresses. Perhaps more relevant to the experiences of many women in the late twentieth century were Kawakubo's experiments with subverting social conventions concerning the way gender is expressed in clothing. For example, her designs do not conform to norms concerning the expression and enhancement of female sexuality in the tradition of haute couture; her clothes conceal rather than enhance female sexual attributes. "
Demeulemeester (androgyny fame): "I try always to design a woman who is at the same time masculine and feminine. . . . A person who would be too masculine or too feminine would be less appealing to me: a style which favors only coquettish and very feminine women seems void to me."
and Vivienne Westwood (punk/diy) are also mentioned.
Anyway all that information above is masturbatory, here were the interesting remarks that addressed the questions:
- "Male designers who are innovators are more likely to be insiders while women designers who are innovators are often outsiders. "
- "Male designers as innovators are likely to innovate on the basis of previous styles or using motifs from the arts."
- (example being Poiret's ushering in of the shoulders to replace the corset, which was said to have been influenced by the reform dress of Scandinavian and German feminists, and then his later artistic and exotic cultural references)
- "Major female innovators are likely to create new styles that correspond to changes in women's roles. "
- The first example of this that comes to my mind is Chanel, whose assembly line modernism wove right into the relevance of post-war social changes for feems
- If we broadened this idea more to a response to social changes in the roles of women AND the relevance of clothing (rather than looking to the past), Stella McCartney's environmental considerations come to mind, ya?
- "Women designers have frequently been outsiders in the fashion industry, either because they lacked formal training or because they were unable to obtain financial support to develop their ideas. The globalization of fashion markets, in which very large fashion organizations have an advantage, serves to exclude women designers even further. The dominance of men in fashion design is a result of organizational constraints and highly competitive market conditions."
If this interests you, what are your thoughts?
