This is a man’s sweater by Jean Paul Gaultier made in 1991, France. As explained by the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum, a muscular body was in vogue during the 1980s. Gaultier created a whimsical juxtaposition here by combining the ideal of the hard male body onto a soft fabric like wool. He almost mocks the obsession with a sculpted body by making also prioritizing coziness in garments. I can relate to his play-on with fashion and body because I also don’t want to forfeit fashion nor the comfort of my body when I dress. I would want to wear something that wraps my body comfortably, almost like a cocoon, but also portray some sort of fashionable silhouette that makes doesn’t completely make me look like a ball. I feel like I need to show some sort of silhouette to indicate the figure or youth of my body, while at the same time wanting to conceal all of my body in a cozy fabric; It is equally or more important to move and sit however I want without needing to worry how my body might look to others.
This kind of garment demonstrates how this would locate the wearer in a specific time. The hegemonic idea of a muscular and fit body like this would be of a young male. It would communicate that the wearer is someone in his youth, probably in his early twenties because that is the idea we have of the ages of bodies. The wearer almost “did not get to have any say with respect to when they were born.” (Kaiser 186), because the physique would communicate the approximate age of the wearer. The museum also very clearly, almost too concretely, described the vogue of bodies throughout the decades. Although this provides a clear summary of fashionable bodies in retrospect, it could also limit the mind because it is exhibiting the hegemonic fashion that is only representative of the upper class women’s style. The in vogue ideal of bodies or the concept of “now-ness” (Kaiser 173) is mainly representative of mainstream women’s attire. This relates to our lecture of the politics behind exhibitions and how they are usually curated to provide a view of the hegemonic fashion, which can portray other cultures or groups as insignificant or static.
Works Cited:
Kaiser, Susan. 2012. Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Berg.
Photo: Taken by me at the FIT Museum
