18 November 2009, originally uploaded by academichic.Sources:
- Black t-neck – Zara
- Green cord skirt – thrifted, remixed
- Black tights – DM
- Black boots – Banana Republic, remixed
- Green tote – Kenneth Cole, remixed
- Jade bracelet – Chinatown, San Francisco, remixed
- Green necklace – thrifted, remixed
Endnotes:
Monochrome, Take II – this time I’ve paired shades of green with black (a neutral). I don’t wear monochromatic outfits often so this always seem exciting and out of my usual style-zone when I do put them together. I often wear one color with neutrals but then I introduce additional colors with my accessories. It’s rare that I will accessorize using only shades of the same color present in my outfit. But today’s greens worked out so well that I’m tempted to try this more often.
Greenery, originally uploaded by academichic.On a different note, I want to continue the discussion A. introduced yesterday on the gendering of clothes. I hate the use of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ to describe certain garments or styles because it perpetuates restrictive ideas about what is appropriate for one gender and what it a borrowing from another gender (“the boyfriend jean, the boyfriend cardigan”, etc). This suggests that certain looks are inherent to one gender and that certain things are ‘natural’ to one gender over the other, and leads to such binaries as soft, delicate, frilly femininity and harsh, dark, somber masculinity. This bothers me because these attributes aren’t just restricted to clothing, they usually translate into how people think they or others should act and be.
What we associate with ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ dress is a cultural construct and is time and context specific, as some of you commented yesterday. Since a terrific reader mentioned looking to the film Dangerous Liaisons as an example, I present you with just that. I have used this clip in my classes before to point to the performance of identity and gender roles and it also happens to be a film clip that most wonderfully demonstrates how what we would now see as effeminite clothing was at one point considered the height of masculinity, suitable for a regular ‘playboy’ to wear. So much for pink and ruffles and satin as being the antithesis of virile masculinity – not for eighteenth-century France they weren’t. S.
