Androgyne: Fashion and Gender

In January 2011, Jean Paul Gaultier’s haute couture runway show ended with the image of a willowy blonde bride in a diaphanous gown. The bride was a man, and one of the first models to walk for both men’s and women’s collections. The event marked the start of a trend. “This ad is gender neutral,” proclaimed a 2016 poster for the fashion brand Diesel; “I resist definitions,” announced a Calvin Klein ad in the same year, while a Louis Vuitton shoot featured Jaden Smith wearing a skirt.The art of Edward Burne-Jones and Gustave Moreau, the writings of Oscar Wilde, and the mystic Joséphin Péladan prove that the turn of the previous century was as compelled by androgyny as this one. From the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, the genders have blended: from Berlin in the 1920s to Hollywood of the 1930s with Garbo and Dietrich; from the 1940s Bright Young Things to the androgynous pop stars of the 1970s, and beyond.Patrick Mauries presents a cultural history of androgyny—accompanied by a striking selection of more than 120 images, from nineteenth-century painting to contemporary fashion photography—drawing on the worlds of art and literature to give us a deeper understanding of the strange but timeless human drive to escape from defined categories.‘This ad is gender neutral’, proclaimed a recent poster for Diesel; ‘I resist definitions’, announced a Calvin Klein campaign; while a Louis Vuitton shoot featured Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith, wearing a skirt like a natural. Fashion magazines have printed countless features on the blurring of gender boundaries, while brands including Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Burberry, Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana have all interpreted this theme in their own distinctive style.Androgyny is nothing new: it has been a leitmotif of western culture for millennia, beguiling and preoccupying artists and writers since Plato. The blending of genders was a constant through the cultural waves of the 20th century, from Berlin in the 1920s and Hollywood in the 1930s, to the androgynous pop stars of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond – Jagger, Bowie, Grace Jones…What do these variations on a theme have in common? And what has caused the dizzying resurgence of androgyny in the twenty-first century? This book places images by some of the world’s greatest fashion designers and photographers alongside works of art and portraiture from many eras. It presents a condensed cultural history of androgyny, drawing on the worlds of art and literature to give us a deeper understanding of the timeless human drive to break free from defined categories.