Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Skirts for Men!: Elizabeth Hawes and Challenging Fashion's Gender Binary

2017; Wiley; Volume: 50; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jpcu.12628

1540-5931

Jennie Woodard,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

On April 5, 1967, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) offered a retrospective exhibition of revolutionary fashion designer Elizabeth Hawes. An irascible and witty woman, widely known for her radical politics and irreverent approach to fashion, the 63-year old Hawes designed a series of skirts for men to be introduced at the exhibition. No stranger to controversy, Hawes believed that men needed to be freed from the constraints of bulky woolen trousers and allowed to wear skirts, predicting that, “by 1976, American males will be as free as females to dress to their personal pleasure” (Hawes, Now That Fashion's Gone to Hell, “Final Chapter”).1 Hawes had spent the majority of her life emphasizing the need to blur the lines between men's and women's clothing. She aimed to design clothes that would achieve a unisex aesthetic and showcase fluid designs sanctioning free movement, symbolizing the emancipation of both sexes from the rigidity of traditional masculinity and femininity. When asked why the time to design men's skirts was now, Hawes told news reporters that the world of men's fashions was “just ready to bust loose” (Sheppard 9). Newspapers from around the country reported the shocking news that a fashion designer not only had the audacity to put a skirt on a male model, but predicted that it would be the rage in menswear by the mid-1970s. As one journalist put it, “If you think you have trouble telling the boys from the girls now, just wait until the skirt catches on” (Ripps 28). A letter to a fashion advice columnist in the Chronicle Telegram expressed indignation at the thought and proclaimed that “if my husband ever wore anything like that, I'd divorce him!” (Juster 12). The New York Times, on the other hand, noted, “the men who happened to be exposed to the new styles didn't scream, protest, or picket,” but thoughtfully examined each skirt's colors, patterns, styles, and designs (“Now, Men, Too” 12). To the models who wore Hawes's skirt, they appreciated both the functionality of such a lightweight garment as well as its pairing with a more masculine button-down shirt. An exceptionally private person who saved very little in the way of personal effects, Hawes did keep two letters she received from men who were overjoyed at her inclusion of men's skirts in her show. The first, dated May 26, 1967, from Edward Brown of Detroit, said, “I want to let you know I appreciate more than I can possibly say your fight for our right to wear skirts. … Thanking you from the bottom of my heart” (Brown 1). The second, undated, from Marvin Killinger of Mishawaka, Indiana, thanked her for her showing in the Detroit News but did not believe men could change for fear of losing masculinity, “Your marvelous ability to think and act for yourself is refreshing to say the least. I wish it were contagious” (Killinger 1). It is telling that Hawes, who did not keep any letters from her relationships with men or her son, stored these particular responses—her lifelong commitment to breaking down gender barriers through clothing had finally been validated. As a result of the success of the FIT show, Hawes designed a fanciful men's knit sweater in 1968 and wrote a piece for the June 1969 wedding issue of McCall's, both of which demonstrated her sense of humor and how alienated she had become from traditional design (Berch 187–88). She also sent out letters and made phone calls to manufacturers in the hope that she could take fashion design in a new direction. Though she received a great deal of negative responses, there were a few enthusiastic cheers for skirts designed for the male body. In a letter dated February 28, 1967, Bob Neuser (of an unnamed design firm) wrote, “The interest in male skirts among college men in Munich could be a start in that area. But don't forget those of us in the 40–50 age group. While I haven't seen pictures of the robes or caftans shown for men in Florence, Italy last month, I'll probably be among the first to try them. I hope we can get together next week” (Neuser 1). Yet this letter, with its smallest glimmer of hope, yielded no results as there is little historical evidence that the two corresponded again. Hawes would not reignite her fashion career through the foray of skirts for men; sadly, she died alone in the Chelsea Hotel four and a half years after the date of this letter. The skirt in question seems to have been lost to history, but its absence does not make it any less significant. Its documented existence demonstrates that there had been an open conversation around what masculine attire might entail and the possibility of introducing such a piece to the public at large. The question then becomes how the historian is to analyze material culture if the piece ultimately failed in much of its efforts for production, distribution, and consumption. In this case, how can the author look at the skirt Hawes designed for men and attempt to interpret the coded messages of societal control, power, and resistance if only a handful of male models wore the piece? Attempts to answer this question through symbolic analysis have been limited to one black and white photograph of a male model wearing the skirt featured in an issue of New York Times in 1967 (see Figure 1). The story the historian can glean from Hawes's skirt for men is one of power relations: the symbolic nature of masculine and feminine clothing serves to keep men in the more powerful social position. Hawes spent the majority of her life arguing that clothing represented women's disadvantage in society; however, she also argued that using clothing to maintain a gendered power structure also had the potential to hurt men, some of whom had to live up to an impossible standard themselves. Though ill-fated, Hawes's attempt to break down the gender divide with a single skirt demonstrated the continued persistence on the part of feminists in the mid-twentieth century to establish new symbolic values for ordinary materials in order to reconfigure the social construction of sex and gender. Source: (“Now Men, Too,” 12) Though there was temporary elation following the FIT retrospective, Hawes soon found herself disheartened that an immediate revolution did not follow. Disillusionment with the continued status quo illustrates a central theme of Hawes's life: a woman ahead of her time. Though the idiom “ahead of her time” suggests forward-thinking, progressiveness, and even a certain heroism, it also ultimately suggests that her repeated attempts at social change failed to move the general public. The question of how a historian perceives relative lack of success must be taken into consideration. Rather than measure a life through groundbreaking achievements and historical impact, the historian can examine how a person's failures provide insight to sociohistorical tensions as well as the obstacles that still exist for any person looking to create social change. In this case, the skirt allows for the scholar to engage with feminist activism on a more personal and relatable level. Though many at the time knew the name Elizabeth Hawes, her position as an activist did not land her in many history books and her name is not synonymous with revolution. Even the FBI, in its attempt to track her supposed communist activities during the early Cold War period, confused her with a fashion designer of the same name in Tennessee, placing information from both women's lives into one file. When looked at more closely, her life might resemble the trajectory of millions of others devoted to a particular social or cultural injustice—there exists multiple attempts to enlighten, inform, and educate with little evidence of change within that lifetime. Hawes's devotion to social justice stemmed further than fashion's gender divide. She worked tirelessly to fight the oppression of women in the workplace and spent the majority of the war years in the Education Department of the United Auto Workers. She expressed frustration that so much was heaped on the shoulders of women in both marriage and as mothers. She felt anger with the capitalist infrastructure of fashion and other industries, despised racist ideologies that prevented many from engaging in ordinary friendships, and abhorred a society that could not even discuss let alone understand homosexuality. However, the constant underlying theme throughout much of her life is an abject distaste for the structural power inherent within gender boundaries. From her first book, Fashion is Spinach (1938) to the retrospective at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1967, Hawes continued to question why a person's clothing choices were dependent upon a feminine or masculine identity. Hawes spent decades writing scathing critiques of the inappropriate nature of women's fashion and its predilection toward conforming women into a sinewy, doe-eyed female meant to look pretty as long as she did not move. She also argued that clothing placed undue pressure on men to conform to a certain degree of masculinity: heavy shoes, uncomfortably tight neckties, and boxy jackets all served to keep men's bodies rigid and their appearance undeniably masculine. Any deviation from this standard increased the risk of an effeminate appearance. Both Hawes's literary works and several personal interviews articulate that communist paranoia, pressures from marriage and family, and expectations in the workplace created an obsession with masculine clothing whose ultimate purpose was to stamp out unwanted homosexuality and maintain the man's status as breadwinner. In 1939, Hawes published Men Can Take It, a 275-page tome lamenting the state of men's fashions and the antiquated standards that kept white collars stiff and Windsor knots tied tight. She argued that men consistently chose to wear woolen suits, neckties, and heavy shoes as a result of societal pressures to be nothing less than a one hundred percent American male. Men's fashions were kept entirely devoid of loud colors or decorative patterns and Hawes believed that this was done deliberately in order to avert any insinuation of homosexuality. Men's suits often outweighed women's clothing by several pounds, signifying strength and virility. As Hawes argued, “the men are too circumscribed in their buying that they are held back by numerous traditions and taboos … [and] are unnecessarily uncomfortable and unbeautiful” (Hawes, Men Can Take It 9). In other words, she found it ridiculous that someone would choose discomfort for the sake of masculine and feminine traditions. Why is it so fine to be the mother of men? It's fine … because when you're an old lady they'll support you. Girls … can support you, too. But that's accidental … It's fine to be the father of men, too … not because he'll have to support you when you're old. Heaven forbid. Because he'll carry on the family name … What difference does it make whether [our sons] can find their sweaters? They have more important things to accomplish in life. We will stay home all day and look for the sweaters. (41–42) This last line clearly derides the notion that women must sacrifice all their interests and ambitions in the hope that their husbands will support them in middle-age and their sons will support them when they are widowed. Society argues that searching for sweaters and doing dishes are small prices to pay for this kind of built-in security. In The Hearts of Men, Barbara Ehrenreich has argued that the American economy depended upon the “principle of a family wage” and that it was up to the male worker to make enough money to support his family (7). American men also had to consider the consequences of not living up to that standard. By the 1950s, this breadwinner ideology placed an enormous amount of pressure on the American male to conform to the standard of the family provider. Serious clothing was necessary for the serious breadwinner: conservative double-breasted suits in black, gray, or the occasional navy blue symbolized the authoritative power of the man at work and the husband at home. To stray from this “uniform” would put the breadwinner's masculinity into question as well as his ability to provide for his family. The corporate man, the embodiment of the breadwinner ideology, could not wear beautiful clothing or consume cosmetics. To do so would intimate feminine influence or proclivity, thus jeopardizing his male power and privilege. Hawes recognized that while this was clearly to the disadvantage of women, it also served to pigeonhole the standard of masculine behavior. Men who did not want to live up to this standard faced ridicule and marginalization. Hawes believed that men should toss out the shirt, vest, collar, tie, coat, trousers, and hat in favor of something “narcissistic, homosexual or bisexual, [with the] freedom to feel and move, [and practice] nonconformity in clothes and social and political thoughts,” thus symbolically freeing themselves from the shackles of gendered norms (Hawes, Now That Fashion's, “Notes on Flugel's”). As evidenced by her arguments in Men Can Take It and later in her unpublished manuscript, Now That Fashion's Gone to Hell, Hawes clearly believed that there was a deep connection between men's fear of homosexuality and their prescribed role as breadwinner. Public attitudes about how a husband/father/caretaker should behave dictated even the smallest of fashion trends: cigarettes, hats, and wristwatches had all, at one time or another, indicated that a man could be a “pansy” (Hawes, Men Can Take It 9). In notes made on scrap paper from the Chelsea Hotel in New York, Hawes used more colorful language to describe the need to keep men from looking too homosexual, “Clothes are the symbols of work and duty—no softness or self-indulgence … a stiff collar is a symbol of an erect phallus” (Hawes, Now That Fashions, “Notes on Flugel's”). This metaphor illustrates Hawes's uncensored and unmitigated attitude toward men's fashions. From her perspective, society placed unrelenting emphasis on masculine responsibility and virility which forced men into clothing that Hawes repeatedly described as painful. Hawes, deeply concerned about the fashion industry's obsession with masculine and feminine boundaries saw postwar America as a time to take on these old standards. After all, women had worn trousers all throughout the war period and she fervently believed that the clothing would become more fluid in the postwar era. She could not have been more wrong. As fear of communism increased at alarming rates, fashion itself reflected the more conservative political and cultural atmosphere. On February 12, 1947, a young French up-and-comer, Christian Dior launched his New Look, which emphasized delicate femininity and lavish romanticism. The New Look accentuated exceptionally small waists (called guepiere), narrow and sloping shoulders, and full skirts whose hemline ended at mid-calf. When the New Look hit the United States, its “commercial possibilities were recognized and enthusiastically exploited” by American designers and producers (Mendes 130). Hawes was appalled by Dior's overrated look, arguing that it did nothing more than pigeonhole women into traditional gender roles: “Dior decreed a ‘new look’ which was just so much spinach, as it merely resurrected what was centuries old in Western women's clothes” (Hawes, It's Still Spinach 42–43). In this quote Hawes makes the comparison between fashion and spinach, a comparison she regularly used, based on a cartoon at the beginning of her 1938 bestseller, Fashion is Spinach. This particular cartoon shows a mother trying to convince her son to eat his broccoli. The son replies, “I say it's spinach and I say to hell with it” (Hawes, Fashion is Spinach v). The insistence that the vegetable is spinach indicates that no matter what authority figures have to say about what is “proper” and “good” for us, we have both the reason and the power to decide this for ourselves. In other words, the New Look was not revolutionary nor was it a return to normalcy. Its constricting waists and narrow shoulders were intended to detract from any masculine line a woman's body might possess and prevent women from being able to adequately participate in manual labor. Within a few years of the advent of the New Look, Hawes closed down her design shop, which she had reopened after the war. She had become frustrated with the disinterest of her workers and the seeming backwards direction fashion had taken since the mid-1930s. As she had in 1939, Hawes questioned why men could not brightly adorn themselves in comfortable and lavish clothes. What was it about clothing that forced men and women to adopt particular gender behavior? Seeking to find an answer to this question and as a favor to an unnamed old friend, Hawes decided to divert her attention to children's clothing (Hawes, But Say It Politely 157, 162). Almost immediately, Hawes realized that kid's clothing was responsible for the “starvation of the American male” (166–67). Hawes said that even before a child had the ability to express his wants verbally, parents led their boys away from bright colors in order to curb “sissiness” and ensure that their son “be a man” (166–67). As evidenced by historian Elaine Tyler May, Cold War communist paranoia greatly contributed to both increased masculinity and homophobia. Anticommunists regarded men who did not marry as “‘perverts who, presumably, had no masculine backbone” (Tyler May 94). Tyler May also argued that approved marital sex was considered patriotic in order to prevent “sexually frustrated mothers [turning] their sons into passive weaklings, ‘sissies,’ potential homosexuals, ‘perverts,’ or easy prey for communists” (117). Thus, a fear of homosexuality in 1950s United States was not merely a state of unabashed prejudice, but suspected homosexuality was as dangerous to a person's personal liberties as suspected communist activities (Corber 3). Hawes's radical suggestions that men move beyond absurd definitions of masculinity was complicated by the fact that homosexuality was regarded with the same disdain as other political, social, and racial minorities in the anticommunist climate of the United States in the 1950s. Hawes's writings had long challenged sexist and homophobic conformity, but in the wake of anticommunist fear, her final published book would deliberately encourage her readers to reject the societal standards of dress. It's Still Spinach, was “a handbook for adult American men and women … to help them dress themselves to their complete individual satisfaction” (Hawes, It's Still Spinach 3). In other words, Hawes's intention with It's Still Spinach was to bring the relationship between psychology and clothing to the attention of the American public. She firmly believed that men and women had to become intimately acquainted with their bodies (the various sizes, shapes, and colors) and their minds (social character, behavior, and individual psyche) in order to dress, look, and feel their best. She believed that being satisfactorily well-dressed led to pleasure and peace of mind (8). Dressing the body is a way to put oneself on display for the world; everything a person does to prepare the body (grooming, washing, hair, make-up, clothes, and accessories) is a way to impress people in both personal and professional society. Hawes began her narrative by discussing the art of undressing, more specifically the pleasures of sex and nudity. Influenced by Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), Hawes argued that one's perspective on sex (dirty/shameful or natural/human) informed how one regarded their naked body. She also argued that Kinsey's reports, while “intriguing,” relied too heavily on what his subjects “say they do” even if their behavior might point to something else (28). Hawes was also influenced by J. C. Flugel's, The Psychology of Clothes, which argued that trousers and skirts sped up the process of sexual desire and excitement. Hawes described Flugel's argument as, “a system which insures that we shall be warned even from a distance as to the sex of an approaching fellow being, so that we need lose no opportunity… of the sexual response” (29). In other words, men and women divide clothes accordingly in order to let the opposite sex know that “I have a penis/vagina!” (28). In It's Still Spinach, Hawes also continued her argument that the mandates for proper attire in the United States exacerbated America's universal fear of homosexuality. She argued that men and women refused to dress like the opposite gender to any degree for fear of their deeply hidden homosexual tendencies. Men are afraid to be beautiful, and thus choose binding suits with tight collars and heavy shoes. Women, on the other hand, are expected to have beautiful bodies that they tend and care for, bodies that they display to the public through carefully chosen dress and accessories. She wanted to determine why American men did not adorn themselves as men had in ancient Greece or the days prior to the French Revolution. Of course, she knew the answer was fear of homosexuality, an extension of the anticommunist paranoia that had permeated American culture for a decade. By giving into such fear, Hawes argued that American men and women restricted their own freedoms, “There is evidently some correlation between freedom in one's sex life and freedom in one's clothes” (It's Still Spinach 31). Hawes inferred that men who chose to dress more carefully and women who chose to masculinize their wardrobe should be allowed to do so, if only to give in to their own psychological and sexual proclivities. Of course, it was not so easy to discuss such matters as sexual freedom and the blurring of gender lines given the social and political hysteria of the Cold War. In addition to communists, Senator Joseph McCarthy had “widely publicized the hunt” for “sex perverts,” arguing that the latter would destruct the social and moral fabric of America (Castenada 46). By 1953, President Eisenhower had issued an executive order stating that no known homosexual would be permitted to work within the federal government, particularly in matters of national security (Thorpe Tully 29–30). Even though the 1950s saw the emergence of a definitive gay culture (particularly through the writings of Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal), suspected homosexuality was seen as socially and politically aligned with communism. Homosexuality was also a moral and religious issue as evangelicals tied homosexuality to “declining moral standards and the rise of secular humanism” in both the 1950s and 1960s (Haider-Markel 246). Thus, it was prudent for women and men to adhere to their prescribed gender roles. To appear as anything other than the happy housewife, pretty, demure, and domestic, or the breadwinner, serious in neutral attire, could have severe consequences. Hawes finished It's Still Spinach by imagining how the French novelist and theorist Anatole France would look at the coming decade, the 1960s. She assumed France's conclusion would read: “The entire American nation has been totally convinced that atom bombing will take place any day. As far as dressing and behavior is concerned, it is the same as if the war were actually on” (Hawes, “It's Still Spinach” 228–29). This would mean that all materials and fabrics would take the Civilian Defense and military strategy into consideration, with only a modicum of “illicit pleasure on the side to keep our spirits up” (Hawes, “It's Still Spinach” 229). Imagination, creativity, and freethinking would disappear with Americans on constant alert for the a-bomb. In order for things to change in 1960, “anyone who wants life to be more amusing, free, interesting, peaceful, and exciting can start right now to dress as most pleases him or her—at least part of the time” (Hawes, “It's Still Spinach” 33). Each of these themes laid the foundation for what would be Hawes's final manuscript, Now That Fashion's Gone to Hell. Though it was never published, likely due to Hawes's untimely death, Now that Fashion's Gone to Hell opens a window to the thoughts Hawes had about the life she led and what the world would evolve into long after her passing. Though Now that Fashion's Gone to Hell rehashed many of the same arguments Hawes had provided in previous works (psychological self-awareness leads to better dress, fashion vs. style, the desperate state of men's clothing, etc.), the fact that the manuscript was unpublished also left it primarily unedited. She referred to television personalities and their style of dress by name, spoke more openly about sex, and candidly referred to herself as a “witch” with the power to shift the public's ability to dress themselves. She wrote notes in the margins that contradicted her own typed words. For example, in the final chapter of the manuscript, she wrote, “The consciousness of being perfectly dressed was defined in the 19th century as bringing a peace such as religion cannot give,” then noting in her own handwriting, “Who wants peace?” (Hawes, Now that Fashion's Gone to Hell, “Final Chapter”). This may suggest that even after six decades of considering fashion, clothing, and style, she still did not believe that there was such a thing as “perfectly dressed.” This could also point to her mental and emotional state at the time, given her battle with alcoholism and the loneliness she felt in New York. In either sense, it is clear that the 1960s served both as a time of self-reflection and uncensored reviews of the state of fashion as she saw it. Though Hawes had been a champion of individualist fashion choices since Fashion is Spinach, she reflects upon what has happened since the publication of that work thirty years earlier. As she writes in the first chapter, “Fashion didn't go to hell through my efforts alone. It was sent to hell by American women and American clothes designers. All I did was call their attention to the fact that they'd be happier if they did away with a Dictator who was interfering with their personal pleasure. (Now That Fashion's Gone to Hell, “Chapter One, Who's Talking”). The fact that she so directly remarks that fashion has “gone to hell” demonstrates a certain amount of nostalgia on her part. Hawes was examining where she had come from and the changes taking place in the 1960s, particularly in the realm of fashion. Part memoir, part prophecy, the book dissected fashion's influence and impact in the 1960s, examining where fashion had come from and where it was going. She argued that fashion had gone to hell because the industry “being built on snobbery, on conformity to the taste of someone who is considered a ‘higher being’ was unable to survive after it became possible for millions of women to be dressed just like the Ten Best Dressed Women” (Hawes, Now that Fashion's Gone to Hell, “Introduction”). The production of cheap knock-offs, the blurring of class lines, and youth-directed clothing trends had taken the mystique and glamour out of the old world of fashion. Hawes hoped that these trends might signify that consumers were taking control of their personal identities through clothing. Dress and appearance changed drastically in the early 1960s and the shift reflected the beliefs that Hawes had held since the mid-1920s. It was no longer Paris that set the pace for fashion culture, but London. With London at the center of the fashion standard, “fashion's cutting edge began to focus on the average young man and woman on the street rather than on a select, wealthy few” (Mendes 158). The British designer at the forefront of the fun and youthful clothing trend, Mary Quant, sought to make easy-to-wear clothes that rejected anything to do with class, formality, and rigidity. Back in 1934, Hawes had a quarrel with one of the wholesale dealers she worked with, Mr. Nibs, where she had told him that young people did not want clothes so tight that it would render them unable to be active, but he refused to listen. In Fashion is Spinach, Hawes said that her despair deepened the longer she talked to men like Nibs and, when he told her that she spoke too much like an artist with little regard for business, she turned to Seventh Avenue and said, “To hell with you!” (253, 262). She had a clear vision for what could work if only someone would take a gamble and find a real solution. Hawes does not mention her by name, but the style of Mary Quant neatly met all of Hawes's criteria for what clothing could be: both fun and elegant, stylish, and purposed to defy the rules of earlier generations. Hawes had stated in several of her previous works that she did not believe that any geographic region should have control over fashion dictates (including London and New York), but in the 1960s the myth of French fashion power no longer rang true. Instead, younger generations in a variety of Western nations had cornered the fashion market. The youth-centered fashion boom also meant the rejection of essential clothing pieces of older generations, namely binding undergarments such as the girdle. Although the bra-burning feminist is a popular iconic image from the late 1960s and early 1970s, very few women actually burned any sort of undergarment (Faludi 89). However, many women rejected the necessity for body-lifting and body-shaping undergarments such as the girdle, which had long symbolized “a barrier between a woman and her ‘real’ self” (O'Connor 220). The abandonment of girdles meant emancipation and liberation. In fact, so many women rejected girdles that between 1965 and 1975, girdle sales dropped by an astonishing fifty percent (O'Connor 221). Men were also inspired to wear more exciting and liberating clothing as a result of the Mods and the rising popularity of leisure: plaids, checkered prints, wide lapels, short jackets, and flowery shirts