Income men? Fabric is no longer just for women’s lingerie and dresses

The New York Times

When Kid Cudi attended the CFDA Fashion Awards, he arrived wearing a lacy wedding dress, veil and all, over his stubble. When Lil Nas X attended the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, he chose a silver suit and a ruffled lace shirt. And earlier this year, Jared Leto attended the premiere of his Marvel movie “Morbius” in Los Angeles, wearing a long white lace cape.

And the trend is not limited to red carpets. In recent years, lace has appeared on the menswear catwalks of Burberry, Moschino, Saint Laurent, Versace and other brands. Even more conventional retail chains like Walmart and Amazon now sell men’s lace shirts and accessories.

Once reserved for wedding dresses and women’s lingerie, lace has been embraced by a new generation, particularly younger men who are drawn to the fabric’s history and craftsmanship, and take advantage of relaxed attitudes toward non-distinguishing clothing. of gender.

“Maybe lace is the final frontier” in menswear fabrics, said Michele Majer, a textile historian and organizer, with Emma Cormack and Ilona Kos, of the “Threads of Power” show, an exhibition about lace that opened in September at the Bard. Graduate Center in Manhattan.

The exhibition, the first large-scale lace show to be staged in New York in nearly 40 years, showcases five centuries of the diaphanous material, which has evolved from an aristocratic accessory worn by both sexes to an everyday consumer item worn almost exclusively. by women.

Illustrated by pieces from the Textilmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland, “Threads of Power” documents the origin of lace in 16th century Europe, where it emerged in two primary styles: bobbin lace, produced with linen or silk threads twisted around pegs to create elaborate motifs; and needle lace, in which fabric is created using tiny stitches, resulting in detailed patterns and an airy look.

Both methods are painfully slow, labor-intensive, and expensive. European kingdoms passed dress laws with the aim of keeping lace out of the reach of the riffraff. (But the poor used it anyway.) And although some women of noble origins took up lace making as a hobby, the production of the material was mainly done by women or girls who worked in exchange for scraps of food, in country houses or convents. , devoid of the protection of artisan guilds.

With the French Revolution came a repudiation of clothes reeking of ruffles. Men’s clothing became tight and monochromatic, and remains so more than 200 years later, while lace has returned to women’s fashion and has become more democratic with the improvement of machine-made textiles.

Income is paradoxical by its very nature. It covers and reveals at the same time, and manages to be both chaste (as in wedding veils) and provocative (in underwear). This quality of allowing the body to be seen accentuates eroticism, but at the same time lace is also the raw material for grandmothers’ handkerchiefs. That’s why lace has become “something of a taboo for men,” Majer said.

So, what explains its new unisex popularity?

Claire Wilcox, senior curator of fashion at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, sees the lace as the latest effort by some men to retrieve the peacock they’ve been keeping hidden. In the mid-18th century, wealthy British dandies known as “Macaronis” returned from their long trips to Italy wearing extravagant clothes that served as a textile parallel to the fluid masses they had learned to consume.

In the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde personified an aesthetic rebellion against the rigidity of Victorian menswear. In the 1970s, glamor rockers wore looser clothing as a challenge to the post-war cult of decency. “I think this literal loosening of fabrics was associated with loosening of morals,” Wilcox said.

Income also fits a broader shift towards gender-neutral fashion; younger consumers reject the division between things that were traditionally considered masculine and feminine. “Everything is smoother, more fluid, more decorative,” Wilcox said.

In “Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear”, shows that Wilcox organized at Victoria & Albert, with Rosalind McKever, and is on display in the United States until Sunday (6), there is a men’s ensemble in pink satin with a “jabot” , or neck ruffle, created by Harris Reed, who was recently appointed as creative director for Nina Ricci. The garment evokes the British aristocracy of the 18th century, but with a little help from the band New York Dolls.

“It’s like a return of the dandies in a new form, and lace, deliciously, has a role to play in that,” Wilcox said.

While past generations may have used lace for its shock value, young people today are simply practicing free speech, said Mathew Gnagy, who produces fabrics and runs the Colonial Williamsburg Costume Center, a living history museum located in Virginia. . Gnagy points to Harry Styles, who didn’t hesitate to go to the 2019 Met Gala wearing a black lacy Gucci blouse.

“It’s not a matter of male or female,” Gnagy said. “Anyone, who chooses to express any gender, can wear this outfit. It’s the essence of what unisex fashion should be.”

Gnagy was less complimentary about the clothes he sees on the runways, which simply translate conventional menswear into machine-produced lace attire. “When lace is handmade, it has unique properties that allow seams to be eliminated, making garments appear to have grown organically, in a particular way,” he said. “I would love to see designers go a little further.”

One such designer may be Kasuni Rathnasuriya, who has been working with lace producers in her native Sri Lanka to produce women’s clothing for her fashion house, Kúr, since 2012. At the request of some clients, this year she switched to offer menswear for the first time, including $250 cotton shirts with handmade bobbin lace panels.

“I was surprised that people accepted it,” said the stylist. “I haven’t received a single negative comment about it.”

Other designers are drawn to the stories that lace can tell, whether through the patterns that have evolved over the centuries and across continents, or through the history of its creators and owners.

For Emily Bode, 33, a stylist who is responsible for handmade menswear brand Bode, the lace evokes 1950s America, “when people had formal dinners in their homes more often,” as well as other social rituals, she said. said. “It’s a material that has a lot of depth.” Since she created her brand, which emphasizes repurposing, six years ago, Bode said she has noticed more “sentimentality” around dressing, and that extends to emotive fabrics like lace. “I think it’s something that still doesn’t dominate the more conventional market, but now people are much more attentive to what they buy.”

Old lace also sparks something in Tristan Detwiler, 25, founder of Stan, a surf-influenced clothing brand in Southern California; the stylist likes to use “vintage” fabrics. His first formative encounter with lace involved a center table runner that belonged to a friend’s grandmother, and since then he has been incorporating this element into his menswear.

A lace tablecloth produced in England in the 18th century, for example, was transformed into a blazer with a ruffled collar, which sold for US$ 5,000 (R$ 25,500). The original decorative hem was used as a border, and the inverted cherubs that graced the towel are positioned with perfect symmetry on the shoulders. The fabric is a little yellow, but details like this, according to Stan’s website, “are reminders of its history.” “Even grunge skaters and surfers want style,” said Detwiler.

Although most lace is machine-made, today, the art of hand-making lace has not been entirely lost. Six years ago, three lace-making artisans in New York founded the Brooklyn Lace Guild to teach traditional lace-making methods to a new generation. Elena Kanagy-Loux, 36, a textile artist and historian who has 400,000 followers on TikTok, traveled to Slovenia in the 2010s to learn the craft. Devon Thein, another of the founders, learned it 50 years ago from the wife of a Danish merchant marine captain who lived in New Jersey.

The two artisans said that the pandemic was a blessing for the production of lace, not only because handicrafts have gained a lot of importance but also because it has been proven that it is possible to teach people how to make lace via Zoom. The guild will hold lace making demonstrations with bobbins, needles and reels at the Bard Center show every weekend through December. Kanagy-Loux pointed out that the guild’s motto is “income is for everyone”.