I have just finished reading the latest ‘Love’ magazine issue called ‘The Androgyny Issue’ and I am a little dumbfounded. Of course I am used to eccentric editorials especially since my favourite Vogue edition is the French one. During her years as an editor in chief, Carine Roitfeld has often pushed the boundaries and shocked the readers. Among many other things, fashion is an exaggeration and it is meant to incite, provoke and influence. But does it sometimes become too much?
I would have never thought that I could find the subject of transsexuality in the pages of a fashion magazine. That is probably because I did not perceive it as ‘cool’ thing. Nor do I believe it should be a taboo but the reality is that we still live in a world where people fear the unknown, therefore they put prejudices and misjudgments above trying to figure what is it all about. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium between the aversion towards gays or transsexuals and using their identities, issues and even personal dramas in order to sell more magazines.
Sex sells, the excessive and the scandalous do as well. But when people become products, well, that’s another story. A sad one.
Moving to London from a place like Romania it was quite interesting to observe all those guys strutting like models around Soho and wearing Birkin bags I was dreaming about since I was 15. However, after a while I started wondering if all of them were truly gay or they were just dressing up accordingly. I was familiar with the cocept of androgyny but I did not realize it became a trend. Labeling and putting people into specific boxes is not something I usually do, so being surrounded by ‘undecided’ boys did not bother me. Or maybe it did when I was flirting with an uber cute guy who turned out to be interested in nothing more than my fur jacket.
When trying to shock comes as a personal decision, that’s absolutely fine. And London is the perfect place to wear a hat made out of poop. Most people won’t notice and the ones that will are very unlikely to care. But when people such as Lea T or Andrej Pejic are featured in magazines and promoted as some sort of ‘the fair fun’, strange becomes sick.
I don’t know how many people out there found the womenswear campaigns with Andrej as a model cool or even interesting. Yes, he looks like a girl but that does not necessarily mean he should be wearing a dress on the runway or be the face o a brand new lipstick. Although I am really trying to avoid it, the word ‘exploitation’ keeps on coming to my mind.
The definition of beauty is extremely broad and I am not even sure whether there should be a definition at all. Still, these crazy pictures or campaigns don’t leave people impressed by the beauty of models, but asking themselves ‘Is this model a girl or a boy?’. The natural becomes so artificial not by using a lot of make-up or heavy airbrushing. It happens when identities are stolen and when somehow mocking the transgender by putting it in a dress or a pair of trousers, depending on how the stylist or the designer feels like at that very moment.
In the ‘Love’ editor’s letter, Lionel Vermeil says that ‘clothes have no sex’. However, I’m pretty sure that the fashion scene is still divided between menswear and womenswear and I am also sure of the fact that people too have a sex. There is a fine line between fashion being more tolerant and including transsexuals, gay or black people in their work field and transforming androgyny in a trend that could have a greater impact than expected. All trends die sooner or later, but what is left could be a new generation of confused people.