My study argues that Bordo’s selection of the Gucci underwear advertisement in 1998 is not so much a sample by convenience, but rather marks out the authorship of erotica in such commercialized male nudity imageries in fashion industry. For instance, the American model as Bordo’s first choice of male pin-up in Calvin Klein underwear, Michael Bergin, along with several male models of that time, are all known for their works of nude photo-shoots in advertisement campaigns, magazine editorials or covers. Amongst the works is the iconic performance of a Swedish male supermodel, Markus Schenkenberg, appearing in full nudity comparative to
Greco-Roman sculpture, whose Apollonian physique makes him god-like or hero-like (figure 2-1). At the same time his body becomes an object of fetishism, implied by the performance of touching and squeezing Schenkenberg’s body by the female model, Stephanie Seymour (figure 2-2). As recognized by both Tungate (2008) and Mory (2008), such nude representations of men, especially sexualized imagery in Italian fashion, have much to do with the “porno-chic”, a term coined by the media in the critique of authorship of American creative director for Gucci since 1990, Tom Ford, in collaboration with Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue at that time, and photographer Mario Testino. This “porno-chic” can be evidenced with the runway photos of Gucci menswear in 1997 and advertisement campaign in 1997 and 1998 (figures 3, 4 and 5), where male nudity has constantly been the trend in a common rhetoric of “sex sells” (Tungate, 2008).
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I would like to argue that the term “porno-chic” is resonant in Craik’s recognition of developments in recent men’s fashion as a moral challenge to the West:
By treating clothes as an index of social and moral qualities, recent male fashion have celebrated the body itself and played down the decorative attributes of clothing and body decoration. The emphasis on the display of masculine attributes constitutes a profound challenge to western
conventions of morality. (Craik, 1994, p. 197)
In coherence, Bordo (1999) also argues that male pornography and male nudity other than the art historian realm have remained a taboo even after the sexual
liberation of women since second-wave feminism, and the gay movement. I would like to argue that such social normalcy of “policing the perverse,” which is recognized by Mort, can be linked to Bordo’s claim of “homophobic psyche” in the society. Her point of view is against rhetoric from press reviews such as male nude bodies in consumerism “remain half-private, slightly awkward, an art form cast from its traditions and in search of some niche to call its home” (Goldberg, 1981, as cited in Bordo, 1999, p. 180).
I wish to show that other than its influence and strategy of catering to American customers in response to the social context of sexual liberation and gay movements, the “awkward” appreciation of male beauty in Italy in fact has its own historical trajectory. Since the 1980s, the Italian brands amplify its own Italian cultural tropes in their collections of menswear, such as Dolce & Gabbana drawing on its origin of southern Sicilian aesthetics of “excessive” style (Mory, 2008) and European’s popular
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men’s sports, football,4 as inspirations of masculinities in their menswear. Italian designer Gianni Versace, known for his provocative and luxurious style of
extravagance, audaciously uses neo-Baroque style with light colors in the patterns of fabrics in his collections of menswear (Mory, 2008; Buxbaum, 1999). In contrast to the Anglo-American religious “puritan” cultural trope, such Italian flamboyant and extravagant “playboy” masculinity challenges its austere masculinity; for instance, the use of leopard patterns in Italian Dolce & Gabbana in the Animalier collection (figure 6) counters the puritan “social convention” of inconspicuous colors, and is constantly being devalued by Anglophone conservatives as “flamboyant,” “frivolous,” tastes of
“minor ethnic groups” or even “homosexuals.”5 However, judging from the success and fame of these Italian brands such as Versace,6 such contention of “Latin”
“flamboyant” aesthetics and masculinity belonging to a socially minor group has proved to be a monochromatically cultural bias, or even compulsory heterosexism.
Neither the Italian “playboy” masculinity nor Tom Ford’s aesthetic of
“porno-chic” by Gucci simply appears to counter the Anglophone masculinity by chance. To see the aesthetic of male beauty in Italian men’s fashion, it is significant to return to its own “tradition” in Greco-Roman times, an epoch when the male physique
4 According to the public announcement of Dolce & Gabbana, the brand has also designed the uniform for Italian national team, Azzurri, for EURO 2012, and has been the sponsorship for it since 2006.
Dolce & Gabbana Uniforms Italian National Football Team EURO2012. (2012, June). Dolce &
Gabbana Press Release. Retrieved from
http://www.dolcegabbana.com/dg/sport/football/italy-national-team/about/
5 In the Hollywood movie, The Stepford Wives (2004), a remake of a 1975 film of the same name, portrays a middle class gay couple, Roger Bannister and Jerry Harmon, move to a small town which secretly performs microchips implant surgery in the brain of the wives' and then transplanted their minds to cloned bodies, turning them impossibly beautiful robots and subservient wives who can be easily controlled by the husbands with the use of remote controls. Eager to change his longtime partner into a more “macho” man, Harmon sends Bannister to the microchip implant and clone surgery. The replicated Bannister throws out his flamboyant shirts, suggestive of Gucci, Versace and Dolce &
Gabbana, and claims running for state senate as a conservative gay Republican, and seriously declaring
“being gay doesn't mean a guy has to be effeminate or flamboyant or sensitive.” This plot envisages the hypocrisy of the deep-seated misogyny and compulsory heterosexist masculinity in conservative American society, by superficially admitting the political rights of “homosexual” yet can’t even take a homosexual senator in his taste and his gestures or performance.
6 Versace’s success in America can be seen from its citation in Bordo’s work, or mainstream Hollywood movies such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997).
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is culturally valorized. The theme of male nudity in sculptures and paintings is prominent in Greco-Roman art history, and so is the homoeroticism and male homosexuality tradition which is certainly one category of Victorian social taboos.
As a famed designer, Ford is also publicly “out” for being homosexual,7 and designers of other Italian menswear brands which Anglophone critics have named, such as Versace, Giorgio Armani, along with fashion photographers that Bordo has discussed, are also known to be homosexual.8 Furthermore, Dolce & Gabbana, is run in collaboration by the two Italian designers, Dolce Domenico and Stefano Gabbana, who are not only business and designing partners but also were in a long term
relationship.9 I side with Bordo that the aesthetics and appreciation of male beauty is not only historical but also sexual. The gaze and aesthetics of male body in Italian men’s fashion involve the Greco-Roman tradition that contains a homoerotic spectatorship; for instance, Bordo has reckoned the Italian Renaissance sculpture David, by Michelangelo (1501-1504), as the prototype of male aesthetics in
musculature as well as a sexual “gay icon” (1999, p. 180). Bordo also provides a consumerist example, showing one American advertisement for nutritional supplements which compares male musculature to David’s physique.
While the most apparent attribute of musculature in Italian men’s fashion is seen as a sign of phallocentric masculinity in Edwards’ writing, this study favors Bordo’s
7 According to press, Tom Ford and his longtime partner, journalist Richard Buckley, welcomed a baby boy last month. Tom Ford is a dad. (2012, October 5). Toronto Sun. Retrieved from
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/10/05/tom-ford-is-a-dad.
8 Mory (2008) has mentioned Armani’s collaborator and partner Sergio Galeotti in her footnote for the section of introducing Armani. According to press, designer Gianni Versace was also openly gay with his business partner and model, Antonio D'Amico, since 1982. Spindler, A. (1997, July 16). Gianni Versace 50 the designer who infused fashion with life and art. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/16/style/gianni-versace-50-the-designer-who-infused-fashion-with-lif e-and-art.html
9 According to press, the duo designers for Dolce & Gabbana are no longer in a romantic relationship.
After the Dolce and Gabbana split: Mixing business and pleasure. (2005, February 20). The Observer.
Retrieved from http//www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/feb/20/fashion.shopping
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adoption of “plural” and “queer” interpretation of the representations of male body. In contrast to the view of muscular male body being merely a sign of phallic body, she rather sees the “alterity” or “queerness” within. Bordo cites from gay theorist Ron Long’s gay sexual aesthetics as she interprets the imagery of Bergin’s body. She comments on his musculature that it “projects strength, solidity;” however, she discovers that “his finely muscled chest is not so overdeveloped. His toned physique is the representation of sexual mobility rather than of “stand-in Phallus” (p. 171). By the term “stand-in Phallus”, Bordo refers to a bulky physique which seems to be a surrogate for real penis; whereas, Bergin’s “real” penis is visible yet unexposed, allowing sexual fantasies in her recognition. For Bordo, Bergin’s performance is nonetheless “feminine” for his curvy body posture and the bowing head which are traditional feminine gestures in European art history. In her reading, the appreciation of male body has been re-discovered in consumerism, and the musculature is
deposited with sexualized and feminine attributes by designers in fashion industry.
My contention here is that “porno-chic” in men’s fashion is not so much
phallocentric as ambivalent for its “tongue-in-cheek” queerness. Such ambivalence of images of men’s fashion, being open to plural interpretations, rather constitutes the abundance of possibility for men’s performance in sexuality, and envisages the main value of images in men’s fashion. As Lestanin (2009) concludes, these homoerotic male nude representations of Western men, albeit in a capitalist consumerism logic, play a part of showing a transition in the social conception of masculinity:
This transition is observed in the frame of the “double approach” theory (Bordo, 1999) that helps us understand how advertisers eliminate the gap between different domains of masculinity that used to be perceived as
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mutually opposed (i.e. homosexual and heterosexual). These marketing techniques enable companies to attract all customers without labeling their product as gay or “straight”. Thus, the capitalist nature of advertising bridges the social gap between the different customer groups by using models and by positioning these models in different environments and situations that can be connected to both homosexual and heterosexual life styles. (Lestanin, 2009)
In sum, for “porn-chic” in menswear during the last century, the representations of “sexy” male bodies in high-end men’s fashion speak to women and “other” men with its potent consumerism, helping them restore the lost pleasure in the public yet voyeuristic spectatorship.