American Menswear, Social Power and Gender Identity: An Interview with Kristen Stewart
Written by Frances Burson
Kristen Stewart is a second-year PhD student in VCU's Media, Art, and Text (MATX) program. She completed an MA in Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology and is an alumna of VCUArts’ Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising. Prior to returning to school to pursue doctoral work she worked in museum costume collections for fifteen years. Most recently she served as the Nathalie L. Klaus Curator of Costume and Textiles for the Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Previously she worked as a research associate in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Textile Arts of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Her research interests focus on the intersection of social power and gender identity manifested in the sartorial codes of menswear.
Over the course of the past year, Stewart has been involved in several projects through the MATX program that have revealed to her the value of an interdisciplinary approach to research in the field of fashion. Work she began with Dr. Eckhardt of the English department was included in a Spring 2023 volume of “Nineteenth Century Magazine”. They worked together to explore the ways in which the legacy of a Bavarian immigrant tailor in Richmond, Virginia was shaped by Lost Cause narratives. A project she completed with Dr. Alkazemi of the Robertson School of Media and Culture on “Puck” magazine's use of cross-dressing as political caricature received a top student paper prize in the Magazine Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) which she was presented in August 2023. This conference experience allowed Stewart to connect with the founders of “The Pink State,” a podcast dedicated to exploring the experiences of women in politics. In September she joined professors and former journalists Andrea Hall and Lauren Furey to discuss fashion's role in politics. Just this past Saturday, October 28, Stewart presented work she began with Dr. Speck of the film studies department at a conference sponsored by the Association for Dress Historians where she was able to share the insights she has gained using an interdisciplinary approach with her colleagues in dress studies. Her work with Dr. Speck focuses on the role of Tom Pye's costume designs in shaping the vision of the gender non-conforming hero of BBC/HBO's series, “Gentleman Jack.”
In her coursework this semester, Stewart has found her work in an independent study with Dr. Caroyln Eastman of the history department particularly useful as she begins to develop a methodology for interpreting the meaning of dress in early American texts and refining her focus to American menswear. She has also been deeply engaged by her experience teaching "What Makes it Menswear?," an undergraduate seminar she developed last semester for the Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising. Returning to that course for a second semester has allowed her to refine her interpretive approach to this survey of men's fashion with the benefit of student insight.
We were able to catch up with Stewart recently to ask her to talk more about her research in menswear and the work she is currently doing.
Can you tell me a bit about the history of menswear, and how you got interested in it?
Menswear is often left out or minimized when we think of the history of fashion. This may be because menswear began to change more slowly and in more subtle ways than womenswear beginning in the late 18th century, but if you look at the clothes that elite men wore before that shift, they were often even more elaborate and spectacular than womenswear. And yet, even slower, subtler menswear changes of the last 250 years have had an important impact. Women's fashion, for example, has stolen or borrowed styles from menswear for centuries. Many of the basic shapes we accept today as "unisex" or "androgynous," and styles like blue jeans actually have their roots in menswear. What strikes me as worth investigating is the fact that menswear has rarely (until very recently) borrowed styles or shapes from women's clothing. I wanted to teach a course about menswear to begin to get to the bottom of that imbalance. I wanted to think, with the help of students, about what "makes" menswear? Why hasn't menswear embraced womenswear influences in the ways that womenswear has embraced menswear influences? What do menswear styles say about how masculinity is constructed over time? And how is contemporary menswear responding to/reacting against these historic constructions?
Why do you think menswear hasn't embraced womenswear as much as womenswear has borrowed from and embraced menswear?
The construction of masculinity as a culturally dominant gender orientation relies as much on the policing of expressions "maleness" as it does expressions of "femaleness." This is one of the questions I hope to answer in my dissertation's investigation of trousers as representative of the hegemonic ideal in American menswear.
What do you think is the most significant moment in menswear history?
I don't think I can pick one of these! There are so many important moments in menswear history--and sometimes even the most subtle seeming shift can change menswear forever. For example, did you know that T-shirts were considered undergarments for men until actors in the late 1940s and 1950s wore WWII government issued T-shirts as main garments on the stage and screen? After leading men like Marlon Brando and James Dean wore T-shirts as main garments they became a staple of everyday men's main dress, and today they are a part of the everyday wardrobes of both men and women. But there are so many important events in menswear history--from Louis XIV's red high heels to Dapper Dan's re-interpretation of luxury branded goods--menswear history has had many influential leaders and historic moments.
In what ways are fashion and menswear interdisciplinary?
I think all histories of fashion (menswear, womenswear, gender nonconforming styles and childrenswear) are inherently interdisciplinary. Histories of science and technology come into play when we think about the important innovations that fashion has inspired or been inspired by. For instance, computer technology has its roots in early mechanized weaving technologies. And, the first chemically produced fabric dye was accidentally invented by a scientist searching for a cure to malaria. Fashion has always had a reciprocal relationship with the arts, and the history of art is a great lens through which to consider the evolving forms of fashion. Fashion history can also help us to understand the ways in which gender roles have evolved and changed over time, and how gender ideals have been enforced and subverted. Because, in Western countries, white men were allowed access to professional advancement, political leadership, voting rights, and other mechanisms of power long before women and people of color, we can turn to Western men's fashion history for a unique insight into some of the ways that dress reinforced unequal power structures. The history of fashion and the history of menswear are most certainly interdisciplinary ways of seeing.
How is the history of menswear relevant today?
This history of menswear is influential in both men's and women's fashion today. Many staples of both men's and women's fashion are rooted in important moments in menswear history (Trousers or Pants (ca. 1790s), Blue Jeans (1870s), Trench Coats (1910s), T-shirts as a main layer rather than underwear (1940s)), and understanding how these styles developed can help us to better understand the complex meanings they convey in our wardrobes today.
Has your thinking about menswear changed at all since you started teaching this course, and how?
Absolutely! I never stop learning while I'm working with VCU students. Among the most significant revelations I've had through interacting with students is the realization that no matter how dramatically the sartorial construction of masculinity has changed over that past 2K years, because these changing expressions have always operated in support of similar structures of power, they are insignificant in comparison to the revolutionary reconstruction of sartorial gender norms that culture is considering today. While the long-term impact of current conversations about gender norms remains to be seen, the menswear market is beginning to shows signs of a radical rethinking of its role in the construction of "ideal" masculinity through channels as diverse as trans-inclusive patternmaking and even skirted garments for male-identifying clients.