May 23, 2016 • 56 mins
When Prince died April 21, the tributes came pouring out, centering especially on his genderbending fashion that gave plenty of kids someone to look up to and emulate. Cristen and Caroline look at the origins and evolution of queer and androgynous fashion to pinpoint Prince's purple place in the timeline.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do refrigerators keep food cold? Who really invented the radio?
What was the worst video game of all time? On
Tech Stuff, we answer these questions and more. You can
get brand new episodes of tech Stuff every Wednesday on Spotify,
Google Play, iTunes, and anywhere else you get podcasts. Welcome
(00:25):
to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House top Works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and dearly beloved, we gathered here today
to get through this thing called Prince's death. I know
(00:47):
that's beautiful. Oh my god, Well I didn't write it.
Prince did. Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince Rogers Nelson dead at
and Caroline and I had been planning to do an
EPISO so about queer and androgynous fashion before the tragedy happened,
And as soon as we learned in the Stuff Mom
(01:10):
Never Told You podcast studios that Prince died, we realized that, oh,
this fashion episode, this has got to be for Prince. Yeah,
it's got to be, because honestly, he is the perfect
encapsulation of so many queer and androgynous fashion talking points. Yeah. Well,
(01:32):
and also such an example of how we often think
about androgynous into androgynous fashion, I should say into narrow
terms exactly. He mean, he kind of visually myth busts
what we think of when we think of androgynous fashion,
which I feel like is often like when I think
of it, I think of like a a very thin,
(01:56):
pale person with a bowl cut and a very large,
bulky um T shirt like a long you know, a
Garfield night shirt. I think of Garfield night shirts. That's true.
Who knew it was the height of androgyneus fashion. But
I mean as soon though, as word of Prince's death spread,
(02:19):
we started to see all of these remembrances and appreciations
of him based around his fashion and also his just
like outright gender fluidity and his fashion presentation. Yeah, I
mean it's it was really incredible to see the outpouring
of fans who were celebrating him, not only for his
(02:42):
music because he is a was oh god, was a
hyper talented musician, but just the effect that he had
on people by blowing through this world with such confidence
and sense of self. And he really did not care,
or he outwardly did not appear to care, uh what
(03:05):
people thought of him. I mean he's a guy who
blurred all of the lines with between gender and ethnicity
and sexuality. I mean, for him, it was about the art,
and I think that that inspired so many kids of
whatever gender or sexuality. Well, and all of that too
reflects his music and how he blurred so many different
(03:26):
genres that he just seemed to also instantly master. Um. So,
before we get into a beautiful timeline of princess clothes,
which I can't wait for, um, and I can't wait
to tell you what my favorite outfit of his is
that I really want, Um, let's talk a little bit
about the history and evolution of androgynous or queer fashion
(03:51):
that really toyed with in Trench gender norms. Yeah, and
we we've kind of already addressed this idea that we
tend to think of androgynous fashion is basically skinny white
women donning men's wear, despite the fact that the word
androgynous means of indeterminate sex. Because when you think about it,
like what does androgyn is fashion in magazines, for instance,
(04:14):
tend to look like, right, it does tend to be
some skinny model, you know, like maybe she's got her
head shaved. But it does tend to be like white
women wearing button ups or loafers or something, and in
very muted tones, there would have been no purple. No,
no purple at all. Um. But what's so great about
(04:35):
Prince and why we wanted to tie him into this
conversation is because by adopting the frills and the heels,
and the glitter and the hair due and the polka dog. Yeah,
don't forget the crop tops and the peek a boo
laser cut yellow chaps. Uh. He really showed us that
androgynous fashion is more than some skinny white person in
(05:00):
a magazine, that it is men adopting other looks as well.
And he also proved that you actually can you being
really only Prince Rogers Nelson can make peek a boo
laser cut yellow chaps work. Yeah, Oh for sure. And
I mean the shoulder pads on them. Really, I mean
(05:20):
you know, I don't know the shoulder pads in the chaps.
Shoulder pads would be amazing. Yeah, would those be hip
hip pads? I don't know. Um. But first, okay, yeah,
like christ and said, let's first dive into the history
and evolution of what we're calling queer or androgynous fashion,
not that those two are necessarily the same thing, but
you know, there's a venn diagram um and a lot
(05:42):
of this information we need to credit to Marlon Coomar,
who read a fabulous history in Bustle, Kimberly Christmin Campbell,
who read a great article about this in The Atlantic,
and Emily Eldridge, who wrote a thesis in the Journal
of Anthropology. And as we walk through the history of
queer fashion, we're also walking through the history of how
(06:03):
people looked at gender. Yeah, I mean, because before there
was a time when our clothing wasn't gendered at all.
Pretty much everyone was wearing tunics, you know, everyone was
wearing those Garfield t shirts around Caroline perfect. So as
fashion as we think about it today develops, it does
gradually go through this gendering process that takes a while.
(06:27):
But as Joe Barracklaw Palletti notes in her book Pink
and Blue, Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, quote,
gender distinctions are among the oldest and most widespread functions
of dress. And if we look, for instance, though at
a in fourteen thirty one, at Joan of arc I mean,
she's kind of the original androgyny pioneer, because one of
(06:51):
the reasons why she was denounced by the Inquisition and
burned alive was because she really claimed that it was
God's command for her to win air men's clothes, keep
her hair cut short, and keep quote no garment which
might indicate her sex. Her fashion was on fire. Yeah,
I mean hash I too soon, um, but that right there,
(07:15):
no garment which might indicate her sex. That's the definition
of androgeny, right. That is, someone who would not necessarily
be the definition of sexless would be uh, Louie, not
by not by any stretch. If if Joan of arc
was plane tunic sexless bowl cut. Yeah, and now I'm
(07:40):
just picturing Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men,
which is not I'm my brain is like leaving me
behind on a tangent. But anyway, Louis in the eighteenth
century totally decked himself out in colorful fabric, lace, ribbons, jewels,
feather and embroidery, and he really embodied the idea and
(08:01):
the concept that you can be powerful and masculine but
also pretty because honestly, wearing all this stuff showed off
your wealth. Oh yeah, I mean because before fashion really
became signals of gender. That kind of opulent, almost prince
esque fashion would have signaled wealth and status. No one
(08:22):
would have seen Louis the fourteenth and been like, well,
someone's a pretty feminine in his wardrobe, because I mean,
at that time it was money really that equaled masculinity.
So I mean, there's no worries that someone might think
you too fancified. I mean, of course, Louis the fourteenth
also famously wore his high heels that had red souls
(08:46):
on them, and only he in the court was allowed
to wear the red souled um high heels, which of
course now are the trademark look of Lubaton high heels.
But then soon enough women started co opting high heels.
But then you get the gendering, not of heels and
flats like flats for dudes, but just a widening of heels.
(09:10):
Like guys were like, okay, you know what we're gonna
We're gonna keep wearing these high heels. Ladies are short
and do it too. It's okay, we'll just wear a
chunky heel. Guys, everybody get the memo. Is a chunky
heel for dudes, narrow heels for the ladies. I want
to get that memo yield heeldie memo. Is there a
newsletter that went out? I mean they have like a
little pigeon facts service. Is he about to creed chunky
(09:33):
heel theilnail that to a church store? Um? And in
the nineteenth century we see the emergence of the London dandy. Uh.
This guy is is super fashionable and he is what
we would today label effeminine, carrying a basically just a
bunch about his appearance. And at the same time, though,
on the lady side of things, you've got advocates for
(09:55):
reform dress. Kristen and I have talked about reform dress
a lot on the podcast, and this is women adopting bloomers,
trashing their heavier garb because people are like, oh wait,
like if I fall in the water, I'll drown because
my clothes are so heavy, and also I can't breathe
and my rib cage and organs are misshapen. Now, so really,
before we had the second wave feminists throwing their bras
into a trash can on the Atlantic City boardwalk in
(10:17):
the late sixties, we have the reform dress suffragist throwing
their they're heavy skirts in a what would they have
just like a fire, an old fire, sure, a fire
or I don't know why. I'm assuming they didn't have
trash cans. They threw them into the back of a
buggy and hit the horse on the butt, so it
(10:38):
ran away. Is that is that elaborate enough? I think
that I think that's that's true. Um, But of course
the um, the dandie fashion would wear away, just quick note. Um,
it's evident in the song Yankee Doodle Dandy. That's when
we see, now I'm serious, when we see this dandy
a sentiment becoming reviled as like oh no, guys, like
(11:03):
we we need to get serious with our clothes. And
it was actually something called the Great Masculine Renunciation, which
was this kind of fashion turning point in the later
eighteen hundreds where men were like, okay, send out another
pigeon memo. We need to start wearing way more boring clothes.
So this is when we just get suits kind of yeah,
(11:25):
it's like leading the way to the suit. Interesting, but
what and you know, we'll get into this. But the suit,
which is like boring standard man uniform, would become radical women.
So yeah, I mean you just get the boring gray
like coat and pants and shoes until Caroline, is it
(11:46):
pants or a pant? Lord Stacy London, London, where are
you somewhere wearing a pant? Yeah? Probably a pant or
cropped pants since its spring. Oh maybe, um well, cool
lots are back. Oh god, um okay. So in the
early twentieth century, Paul Poire sets women free. We've done
a whole episode on this man, which I highly encouraged
(12:08):
that you go listen to. But his freewheeling, lucy goosey
designs freed women from their corsets and ushered in in
dresses kind of a long, lean, impure wiste, as Stacy
London would say. But his designs also included harem pants.
(12:29):
I remember when what was the daughter's name, the youngest
daughter's name in Downton Abbey, Sybil Sybil. She came home,
uh with with some harem panned outfits and then look
what happened to her spoiler spoiler um. And again what's
going on simultaneously is you have that famous Coco Chanel
(12:49):
creating a more masculine silhouette for fashionable ladies of the
time because she believed that you should be able to
dress in a way that expresses you pant or skirt, whatever.
But if we look at Hollywood and women's androgynous fashion,
it starts to arise in the nineteen thirties and forties,
(13:12):
kind of sporadically. Um, but really the androgynous fashion fashion
plate would have been Marlena Diedrich, who um in a
film of hers whose name is Escaping Me right Now,
where she plays a cabaret performer. She has a scene
where she comes out looking amazing in a top hat
(13:35):
and tuxedo and she kisses a woman on the lips. Scandalous. Well,
and Marlena Dietrich, let's bring it full circle for stuff
I've never told you fans. She was friends with Anime Wong,
who we talked about in our episode about um, the
fetishization of Asian women. Um. But Dietrich even off screen
(13:57):
with sport pants and even a suit from time to time,
just like Katherine Hepburn. That's right, Katherine Hepburn, daughter of
a suffragist who I'm pretty sure and you know, listeners,
you can always tell us if you're interested in this,
I want to do it anyway. I kind of She
was the daughter of a suffragist, and I want to
do a double episode on Katherine Hepburn and her mom
(14:19):
because they were such impressive ladies together. But writing about Hepburn,
Coomar talks about and I don't know if I had
heard this story before, I had not, so writing about
Katherine Hepburn in particular, uh Comar says that Hepburn threatened
film executives with walking around set in her underwear when
(14:40):
they swiped her pant outfit. Yeah, Hepburn was like, well,
I'm going to wear my my pants or my panties exactly. Um.
When we get to the nineteen fifties after World War Two,
this is when we first have the development, slowly but surely,
the divi elopment of even the term gender coming to
(15:03):
mean what we think of it today, describing the social
and culturally created and constructed roles that we associate with
biological sex. But that's really happening in the background. Um.
But when it comes to fashion, of course, post World
War Two, I mean it becomes very gender segregated. Dad's
(15:25):
in the suit, Mom is in her Betty Draper costume. Well, yeah,
I mean because Mom was essentially sent back to the
kitchen when dad came back from the war and wanted
his job back. So all of a sudden, again, this
is another a sminty topic that we've tackled before, that
those gender roles, we see them get really entrenched post
war because of men coming back and wanting to reassert
(15:47):
their place in society while their wives had been out working.
And then the nineteen sixties we see a reaction against that.
And Joe Paletti we cited earlier in her book Sex
and Unisex Fashion Feminine Is Them and the Sexual Revolution
talks about how sixties unisex clothes our reaction to that
gender stereotyping and a nod to the idea that gender
(16:11):
and biological sex might not totally equate. But as with
our kind of stereotypical idea of androgynist fashion today, that
fashion focus more on women adopting masculine silhouettes rather than say, oh, well, guys,
here's a skirt for you. Um. But also during this
(16:33):
time we have this London counter culture of the teddy
boys who dressed like Edwardian dandies, and there are so
many fantastic photos of them online, and they had teddy
girl counterparts who wore lots of structured blazers, blouses, and trousers.
They would often still wear skirts but still had um
(16:57):
I mean, I guess you could say semi androgyna suiting
the almost like a Janelle Monet kind of situation. Yes, yes, well,
and especially with their updos to yeah. Yeah. And you're
also seeing the rise of super slender models like Twiggy, who,
while she was obviously a super cute woman, still had
(17:19):
that more flat androgynous figure. And in nineteen sixty six,
years after Marlene Dietrich first sported her tuxedo in that
movie and Kissed a Woman, Eve St Laurent created the
first tuxedo specifically for women, and writing about this creation,
comar sites uh St Lawren's muse Violetta Sanchez, who explained
(17:45):
that it was super radical, especially among the stuffy bourgeois,
that to see women quote take possession of man's attire
and the freedom it gave her. It took her out
of that spot where she was frat Jill. And we'll
see that concept to come up again in the eighties
with one particular musician. Now, I gotta tell you that Caroline,
(18:06):
that St Laurent tuxedo really just kinda looks like a tuxedo,
you know what I mean. It's not like it was
radical at the time, right, I mean, it's a woman
in a tuxedo. But so for listeners, if you're trying
to picture what it looks like, just picture a tuxedo. Um.
Then in nineteen sixty eight, a couple of years later,
(18:28):
you have designers including Pierre Cardan and Paco Raban creating
these unisex almost space ag fashions with a lot of
synthetic fabrics. So ste're clear fires, fires friends, um and
department stores. Very briefly, I mean we're talking only in
nineteen sixty eight. For a few months, got in on
(18:50):
the trend and even set up unisex sections. But then
that kind of gave way to cute, cere non threatening
his in hers fashion, So his and hers versions of
the same kinds of things like the jumpsuits. Hasn't her
jumpsuits that I really want my fiance and I to
gut He doesn't know this yet, Yeah, just uh subtly,
(19:13):
subtly passed this episode along to him. Well, and you
know it's an honor of Prince and all of his
Paisley jumpsuits. So why should we not wear them? That's
what I'm saying, man, uh, you know. And so again
we've been focusing so much on women adopting male silhouettes.
But in these sixties and the same era, rock stars
(19:35):
get in on the fund, people like Jimmy Hendrix, Mick
Jagger and especially David Bowie. These guys start toying with
gender and they're adopting the frills, the hip huggers, the glitter,
the prince and especially the heels. And I hadn't heard
this term before, Caroline Um. But this fashion movement modeled
by these rock as uh is called the Peacock Revolution.
(19:58):
I love it. That emerged in London and it was
coinciding with the decriminalization of homosexuality and also the sexual revolution.
And quick side note, um, if anyone's interested in some
related summer reading, I highly recommend the Oral History. Please
kill me about the punk movement that gets into some
(20:21):
of this stuff. And well, it's interesting though, I mean fashion.
You can never say that fashion is a political because
this Peacock Revolution was not only a way for straight
and buy guys to play with gender and fashion and
looks uh and norms, but it was also a way
(20:42):
for closeted gay men to be able to explore these
looks as well without having to come out of the closet.
If it's part of the fashion trend and it's being
demonstrated by like super masculine sex gods like Mick Jagger
and David Bowie, will in I can get away with
it too and not have to come out as a
(21:04):
gay man. Yet so as opposed to those unisex fashions
designed you know, by those like high end names, it
seems like this movement in the sixties is peacock revolution
is a legit queering of fashion right, because it's definitely
not taking the sex, and I mean that as both
(21:25):
biological sex and sex sex. It's not removing it from
the clothes or from the person wearing them. If anything,
it is emphasizing the sex of the person wearing it.
Whether that is a woman in a like a sci
fi movie and she's wearing a quote unquote unisex tunic
but of course it shows off her figure, or whether
(21:46):
that is someone like Mick Jagger and hip huggers or
David Bowie and his many many outfits, it's still emphasizes
the sex of the person but you're right, this is
when we start to see the queering of fashion and all.
This continues along with punk music into the seventies and
eighties with bands like the New York Dolls. And you
see trends though, um that you now see in I
(22:08):
want to say it was it's really popular in South
Korea of guys and girls dressing exactly alike, wearing the
same clothes. Um. And you also have trends at home
of non gendered child rearing that sounds a lot like
what we hear about in terms of parenting today. And
in terms of high fashion, you have Halston's Ultra Suade
(22:32):
shirt dress that was a feminine twist on men's wear.
So what Halston did was basically take a button down shirt,
lengthen it, belt it, and sway defy it, sway defy it. Perfect. Yeah.
And so while working women are adopting trousers and pikats
and dress shirts, men are sporting mandarin collar jackets, tunics, turtlenecks,
(22:57):
ponchas and Ascot's fair listeners. Just google unisex ponchos from
the seventies and just look at the glory that is
these crochet atrocities of men and women wearing matching ponchos.
It's both wonderful and terrible. You know what I would
rather have than matching jumpsuits with mamboo matching calftans. This
(23:22):
was the era of the calftan. And I mean, what
is there a more regal and comfortable garment that someone
can wear than a calftan? I would submit that there
is not. But I love this evolution here because going
from the New York dolls, so you've got again like
these rockers who are wearing full on makeup, um, you know,
(23:47):
down to the couple pool side in Palm Springs sporting
their caftans caftans and getting calf tansy. So moving into
the eighties, and we should put a little asterisk here
because people late seventies early eighties is when prints is emerging.
(24:09):
In the eighties, we see fashions start to retreat back
along gender lines, because nothing is anything more than a
reaction to something else, right, and so you've had all
of the like genderless child rearing type of things going
on in the seventies. But then you see in the
eighties women you know, needing to be heavily made up
(24:29):
with their hair done in in dresses again in men
in power suits, but like, yes, that's all true, but
women were wearing very masculine women's where too, what with
their shoulder pads and power suits and stripes on their suits,
and so then we start to see the queering of
those suits when women put them on. So you've got
(24:51):
people like Annie Lennox with her orange pixie cut, her
pinstriped suits, bright lipstick, and she herself is super slender
and androgynous looking. And then you've got megastar Grace Jones
walking that line between sexy, undeniable woman and basically androgynous
(25:13):
alien from matter space. Oh, Grace Jones, Caroline, we should
also do an episode on her, just so we can
luxuriate in her flat top pursuits, her lipstick, her just musculature,
everything that outwardly expressed her complete and total self possession. Um.
(25:35):
For instance, she has this fabulous quote on when she says,
I never asked for anything in a relationship because I
have this sugar daddy I've created for myself, and it's me.
I am my own sugar daddy. I have a very
strong male side which I developed to protect my female side,
and if I want diamond necklace, I can go and
(25:56):
buy myself a diamond necklace. Yeah. I remmember seeing Grace
Jones when I was really little and like I r
L Yeah, no, I mean I didn't go see her,
but I mean like in magazines or whatever, and just
being like, this person is unlike any person I have
seen before, because she was she she was in such
(26:20):
like she had just such self possession. Like you said,
she was fully in control of this powerful, androgynous but
still sexy image. And then when you move into the
nineties and you move away from the Grace Jones silhouette,
you see the revival of the what we saw in
(26:42):
the like sixties and seventies and eighties in terms of
punk and men and women dressing alike in leather jackets
and jeans and boots and whatever. Because in the emergence
of grunge you see again men and women sporting the
same flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and Doc Martins. But then
of course you have people like Kurt Cobain wearing baby
(27:04):
doll dresses, pigtails, eyeliner, and women's sunglasses and Caroline I've
gotta tell you, I just realized that m today as
we're recording this episode, I am wearing a very um
my so called life angela Chase esque baby doll dress.
Did not plan it, but um, I feel very I
feel like I'm really close to the subject now. I'm
(27:25):
pretty sure I had that dress in seventh grade. Thank you,
pearl buttons and all. It's it's very comfortable. So we
got a hot back a little bit in our timeline
to start off our Prince timeline, because he really gets
going in terms of his public presentation in the late
seventies and early eighties, and really from the get go,
(27:49):
I mean he's just putting it all out there fashion
wise and kind kind of literally too, putting it out
there in the sense of wearing like THI highs and
bikini bottoms on stage age, much to the chagrin of
Rolling Stones fans who he originally opened for. Um but
he was always blurring those lines between masculine and feminine fashion. Yeah,
(28:15):
and I want to hit on some of the some
of the high notes, some of the print signatures before
we dive into this timeline. So what's been really interesting
is to follow these trends that he sets and sets
for himself, including his sunglasses, you know, he sported everything
from asymmetrical eight shades to granny glasses two more recently,
(28:35):
those third eye sunglasses, so they're big and round and
dark and include one lens over his forehead third eye,
third eye. Yeah. And and of course the hair, whether
it was long and flowy curls, worn as a natural
afrow or in an updo secured with a scarf. And
don't forget the perfectly waxed brows, the perfectly defined mustache
(29:00):
and beard, and the perfectly defined eyeliner. And don't forget
about those signature high heels. Um. He famously told Rolling
Stone people say I'm always wearing heels, because I'm sure
he was five too, by the way, but he said,
I wear heels because the women like them. Yeah. And
just like with the whole peacock revolution idea, as Vanessa
(29:22):
Friedman writ in The New York Times, on women, He'll
suggest sex Prince showed they could function the same way
for men. But I mean he wore them all the time.
And Mike Tyson's memoir which no, we did not read,
this was just cited in an article. Um, And Mike
Tyson's memoir, he claims, And I believe it that Prince
wore them to play basketball. Why not? I mean to me, like,
(29:45):
heels don't even look weird on Prince because they're just
so him. I kind of imagined that, Um, Prince's feet
looked like Barbie feet. They're just like already curved and
and ready to slip into a perfectly fitting he'll. I
love that so much. Um Okay, so we've got to
go back to like mid androgeny queering fashion timeline to
(30:08):
nine because the cover of his second album is just
him shirtless with flowing wavy hair. But the back, the
back of that album is him naked on a Pegasus.
So does being naked on a Pegasus count as queer fashion?
(30:30):
I don't know, man, it definitely counts as print fashion
counts as amazing. Yeah. Oh, I wonder how many people
will in in Memoriam get prints on a Pegasus tattoos.
I'm just saying throwing it out there. Um in Uh.
He rolls up to this place called Flippers Roller Disco
(30:53):
Boogie Lounge, Want to Go in Los Angeles wearing a
tank top, bandana, thigh highs, and black underwear, and in
his dirty Mind and controversy era, he often just sported
a trench coat, bikini, briefs again the thigh highs, and
a net kerchief. And uh, it took people a minute
to get used to this. But if you look at
(31:14):
the lyrics of a single controversy, you know he's already
over it. He says, Uh, some people call me rude.
I wish we all were nude. I wish there was
no black or white. I wish there were no rules. Yeah,
so he's fully aware. I mean he has never been
anything but genuinely that which is blurring those lines. Wishing
(31:35):
we were nude and there were no rules. Yeah, I
mean he lived as if there were no rules. He
was on Pegasus, is on pegasus, is in heels. You know,
we can't see his feet on the pegasus, so I
bet if we could see the full photo, he would
be No, he would probably be in heels. Who knows,
I mean yeah, because you can't really see anything from
(31:57):
the waist down. He could be in those thigh highs.
But again, and like, here's an example of him blurring,
like what would be on a woman super sexy to
the point of almost inappropriate and titilating, like perhaps a
stripper would be wearing that on stage, but also blending
it with like a flasher in the park on this dude,
(32:20):
and I mean, and it just was him. It was
so him, And I think it's so funny, not funny,
but weird and ironic that Rolling Stones fans were booing
and throwing stuff because hello, we just cited Mick Jagger
as part of that whole Peacock revolution of blurring those
gender and fashion lines and part of like queering fashion
twenty years earlier, and here they are booing him. And
(32:42):
it was really fascinating to go back and read um
a piece on prints in the New York Times from
one where already music critics were like, Okay, this this
guy is something. He's already a legend, and they were
fawning over or his um ability to mix music styles
(33:04):
and his just like sheer talent because he played and
produced and saying everything. But also to the critic, rights,
the music transcends racial stereotyping precisely because it's almost all prints.
Prince himself transcends racial stereotyping because, as he wants put it,
I never grew up in one particular culture. And you
(33:27):
can see this critic throughout the piece kind of grappling
with this this vision of Prince not only what he's hearing,
but how that collides with what he sees. That's right.
And in four, what we see is the emergence of
that iconic purple look with the ruffled shirts. It's the
(33:49):
look that Dave Chappelle war on The Chapelle Show, and
it totally echoes Louis the four. And so it was
under the eye of designer Marief Frands that he got
his Purple Rain look. The ruffles, the pearl studded purple jackets,
the pink feather shoulder piece, the stacked boots and kristen yes,
(34:10):
the Paisley jumpsuits. And when he accepted his oscar for
the film Purple Rains soundtrack not not Purple Rains, you
know the screenplay. Um, when he won that, he accepted
it in a black pant suit, black lace gloves and
a glittering purple shawl and heels. But his two um
(34:34):
lady musicians, the Revolution that he played with, they were
wearing the Purple Rains suiting, which was just a I mean,
you created a fabulous trio affair. Well yeah, because I
can't remember which woman it was, but she was wearing
his brocade suit with the pink feather shoulder piece, and
you see pictures of him wearing the exact same outfit
(34:56):
because he was tiny, just like a lady. Oh you
think that they wore this same I mean it was
the exact same shoulder piece. I wouldn't be surprised if
it was the same suit. I can't imagine Prince sharing clothes.
Could you imagine what would be like for her to be?
Like if Prince is like, yeah, you can borrow my
purple rain suit, be like, no, there's no I could.
(35:17):
I couldn't possibly. You do whatever Prince tells you use anyway.
One one of my favorite tour looks, though, came in
with his tour for the album Parade, where he was
all about the crop tops. Gosh, um, listeners, I'm a
fan of crop tops. Yes, I'm thirty one and I
wear crop tops because why not? Um, I you know,
(35:41):
since a lot of Glazer does it all the time
on Broad City, I say it's okay for me to um.
But he's wearing in one of the photos on Getty
that's been circulating a lot, this asymmetrical black crop top
with a row of white buttons and I want it
not be asymmetrical style, but just like the black with
the white buns. Real big fan. I mean he looks great.
(36:06):
What wasn't he also wearing like bell bottom trousers or
something with that. I think he was wearing just like
tight pants in the bottom. I mean all of his
pants were. We're tight in that air. He got a
little looser as he got older. Well, two years after
the Parade tour, after he released Loves Sexy and that's
the one with a naked prince floating amid giant purple
(36:26):
flowers on the cover with his arm draped over his nipples. Uh,
he was super big into sporting this black and white
polka dot blouse with an oversized collar, matching white and
black polka dot high waisted pants and of course heels,
um Caroline. They were matching polka dot heels. And this
(36:48):
is my favorite prince look because I love a polka
dot and it's almost like the blouse style is kind
of like a high necked pussybow blouse that we still
see today. I've got a couple in my closet, so
I'm like, oh, black pussy bow blows with the you know,
white dots and those high waist pants, but the high heels,
(37:09):
black and white polka dot high heels. Hello, it was
just a fabulous look. Yeah, it was fabulous and so feminine,
you know. But but on Prince it was just Prince.
It wasn't masculine or feminine. It was just sexy Prince
wearing polka dots. Yeah. Have you ever I'm trying to
think if I've ever seen cin a fella in polka
(37:31):
dotted pants, and nothing is coming to mind, Nothing does
come to mind except Prince all right, and on MTV
for his performance of Get Off with the New Power Generation, This,
my friends, is when he sports these spectacular yellow laser
cut I'll just say bottomless suit, which, of course the top,
(37:55):
the suit top, complete with shoulder pads, was a crop
top ston uh and yeah, and heels yellow, matching heels
to match the fantastic suit. Yeah. I don't think he
never wore anything but heels. Right, No, nothing, Can you
imagine Prince and flip flops? Just no, right, because the
Barbie Yeah yeah, just like Barbie can't walk in flip flops. Yeah, exactly.
(38:19):
And if we look at the early two thousand's, he's
still wearing tailored suits, but they're so bright and vivid,
as opposed to that monochromatic palette that we usually associate
with supposedly androgynous fashion. Um. One of those looks, though,
came in two thousand four, where he was supporting a
(38:40):
look that we would really never seen before, although you
could say that about each one of Prince's looks. Um.
But he was wearing his hair straight and it was
about shoulder length, had a long goatee, and these asymmetrical
red and white eighties sunglasses and like, if you have
not told the obats Prince, I would not have known. Well,
(39:02):
it was for the Essence Music Festival, and his reasoning
was that he was tired of being the center of attention.
And I'm like, you're freaking adorable. I love that. Like
when Prince wants to wear a disguise because he's tired
of being the center of attention, he just sticks out
that much more. He's like, let me just straighten my
hair and put on these very obvious sunglasses. Is anyone looking?
(39:27):
Is anyone looking? Um? Yeah? And I mean this our timeline.
I mean we could talk forever. I mean one of
his last iconic trends was his tunics. I mean he
wore a white studded one to Coachella in two thousand eight.
More recently, he wore the whole gold outfit and that's
(39:49):
when he was sporting his third eye sonnies Um. I mean,
the the guy is like one in one in a trillion.
I mean, there's no one like him fashion wise. But
because of that, because of his line blurring and his
you know, give no flips attitude, it really opened the
door for other people to be able to explore their
(40:12):
own identities through fashion, to explore their own tunic phases,
which I really hope to reach one day. Just be patient.
I'm just saying it. I mean, because we we have
to mention though, when he changed his name to the
Love symbol, which was the mix of the Mars and
Venus male and female symbols, Um, And he did it
(40:34):
because he wanted to make Warner Brothers mad Um didn't.
He was like, Okay, well you want to use my
name and you own my stuff, well I'm going to
change my name to something that you can't even print. Um.
And he wanted to brand himself and illustrate these parts
of his identity which were the fusions of the masculine
(40:54):
and feminine as he saw it. Yeah, and the designer
behind the symbol, one of the two or three designers
behind the symbol, which is of course the mix of
the Mars and Venus symbols. Uh told Wired that Prince
really wanted to mix the feminine and masculine energy because
he was working with all of these women that he
(41:18):
wanted to see boosted to fame, and so he saw
those elements of male female, masculine, feminine as being equally
important and wanted to integrate them. And this designer, Mitch Monson,
said he was about approaching things differently and not discriminating.
He was making this unified statement that everybody should be accepted.
(41:39):
So in addition to doing things like writing slave on
his face and changing his name to a symbol to
irritate Warner Brothers, he was also just as part of
that expressing that duality that he's so famous for. And
his confidence in carrying that duality was key. I mean,
it didn't matter what you thought of him. Prince is
(41:59):
just going a Prince. And one thing that Travell Anderson
over at the l A Times talked about in his
remembrances of Princes how he opened the door for black
men to explore gender, sexuality, and fashion. He wrote, this
image of a secure and assured black man embracing both
the masculine and the feminine is what I remember most
(42:21):
of the musician, although I wasn't alive, the YouTube video
of the moment became a reference point for this gender
nonconforming man. Travilla is referring to himself who needed permission
to be himself, and he goes on to say that
Prince taught me how to transgress gender roles and this
is something pretty revelatory for black men in particular. Yeah,
(42:46):
because Anderson writes black men in his community grapple with
those limiting gender expectations. Anderson rights, even now, black people
more often find themselves born into the suffocating box that
Hugh's too close lead to an identity that doesn't fully
encapsulate our complexities. In Nuance, Anderson calls gender a straight jacket,
(43:07):
but that it wasn't this way for Prince, who found
a way to break free. He writes that Prince was
a persona that was masculine and feminine and the world
had to deal and he also talks about what a
statement it made that Prince was so uh so sexual
in his presentation as well, considering all of the racist
(43:28):
stereotyping around the hyper sexualization um of black men and
perceiving their sexuality blackmail sexuality as predatory. And yet here
you have Prince who is arguably one of the most
sexual pop stars of all time. Yeah, and I have
to read this quote from Frank Ocean. I know it's
(43:50):
been circulating a ton on the Internet since Prince died,
but Frank Ocean put it this way. Quote he learned
early on how little value you to assign to someone
else's opinion of you, an infectious sentiment that seemed soaked
into his clothes, his hair, his walk, his guitar, and
his primal scream. He was a straight black man who
(44:11):
played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee
high heeled boots epic. He made me feel more comfortable
with how I identify sexually simply by his display of
freedom from an irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender
conformity and so then, basically, when you try to find
(44:32):
a definition for what queer fashion is, that can be
really challenging to pin it down. But Prince showed us
what it could be, and Randy Shandrowski, who's the CEO
of label Lactic uh, said, yeah, you know, queer style
is hard to define because it's a rejection of that
(44:54):
dualistic thinking that would place a person into a category
of being this or that. It is more about the
disintegration of definitions. And so based on that definition, that
non definition definition, it really seems like Princes the epitome
of that because his whole identity was shaped in a
(45:14):
way that broke down all of those barriers and made
it possible for people to look at him and say,
you're just you, and I mean I can be just
me then well, on every single level, from his music
and his relationships with recording studios, to his fashion to
(45:35):
his just his day to day life, he embodied a
freedom of expression constantly. And if we look at queer
and androgynous fashion today, um F I T director Valerie
Steele says that designers are really kind of questioning clothing binaries,
(45:56):
you know, questioning whether we really need male versus female dress,
and you're seeing more clothes on runways that are androgynous or,
as she says, with similar or the same looks for
men and women. But the thing is like that that
is one definition of androgyny, but that is not what
Prince was doing. I mean, he was creating something altogether
(46:18):
different too, So I think that also goes to show
how he's even more of a visual definition of what
queer fashion can be beyond our matching caftans. That's right,
That's exactly right. And I mean, if you look at
the landscape today, it's super common to see men coming
(46:38):
down the runway in skirts, those pussy bow blouses, fur coats,
pink all of these things that are like so have
been the domain of women and feminine people. You also,
it's super common also to see women in sharp suits
and minimal makeup. You've got more trans models walking in shows,
and I mean, I know this is just me and
(46:58):
I have like a feminist, gender focused podcast, but like,
I don't even think twice about this stuff. I don't.
I don't think twice about a man in address, whether
it's for a women's line or a men's line or
trans models. It's just like, yeah, okay, it's just bodies
showing off clothes. But I think the real evidence of
a cultural shift is that we're seeing it not just
(47:18):
on the runway but also on sidewalks, because all this
too is making me think of Chinas and dramed on
is the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and how he absolutely plays
around with his fashion. The episode the season where he's
clearing at his closet. Oh my gosh, I love it
so much. Can we just do a Kimmi Schmidt episode
(47:39):
just so you and I can just watch Kimmi Schmidt
over and over over and I go, yeah, Well, you
do have more and more designers creating unisex lines amid
this climate of more and more people refusing to want
to identify as specifically male or female, and Johnny Johansson,
who's the founder of ACNE, said, I've seen this new
generation's attitude to fashion where the cut, the shape, and
(48:01):
the character of the garment is more the crucial thing,
rather than seeking approval from society or to follow set norms,
which is totally prints. I mean you even have Kanye
West sporting some black velvet mid calf heeled boots in Paris.
I mean this is he wishes he could be Prints though.
Oh yeah, I mean Kanye cannot come close to Prince No, no,
(48:24):
offense Kim k. Yeah, for all this time she listens
to us secret listener. Um. But you're also seeing some stores,
to some higher end stores that are eliminating men's and
women's sections. Um. This is something that we talked about
in our Fashion and Feminism episode a while back, and
(48:46):
in terms of women in our everyday presentations. I mean
think about how you know, swimsuit season again is upon us,
and ladies are foregoing the razors, um and calling on
us to free our nipples. Yeah, but you're also seeing
Peacock Revolution part two or maybe part thirty. I don't
(49:07):
know where we are at this point, but you've got
rappers like Atlanta's Young Thug, who you know, talks about
shopping in the women's section for better and tighter fitting
genes and appears in magazines wearing tool dresses. And you know,
it's just it's nothing that's going to go away, nor
should it. If anything, we're gonna just keep moving towards
(49:29):
that androgynous fashion future. I highly doubt that that ever
means that it's going to like completely erase gender lines
and fashion. But it's just this whole conversation has just
been evidence that Prince has always been at the cutting
edge of that queering of fashion. Yeah, I mean, because
(49:50):
I also don't think that androgynous fashion is somehow better
or even say like more feminists than more gender trade
aditional fashion styles. It's more about that element of freedom
of expression. Are we free to be able to dress
in a way that we feel most comfortable in? Um
(50:10):
and really quickly, Caroline talking about young young thug shopping
in the women's section, It reminds me too of the
college town that you and I attended college in, which
is a music town, very much. And I knew a
few um rocker fellas who wore women's genes for the
(50:33):
type fit my boyfriend in college did or after college. Yeah,
I mean yeah, because it wasn't It wasn't a super
popular look yet, the whole skinny Jaine thing in terms
of mainstream But Valerie Steel, the fashion historian and f
I T director, also had a really notable thing to
say about why women in masculine clothes that whole trend
(50:56):
has been more successful over time than the more recent
things that we've been seeing of men in more traditionally
feminine clothes. And she said, if men are the ones
who are in power, there's always going to be a
limit to people who want to look like the powerless.
So in a way, I mean that goes to show
even more how Prince's looks. We're so transgressive. Yeah, I
(51:22):
I just I love to sort of fall into daydreams
about Prince's fashion and how he adopted purple because it's
the color of royalty, and purple is like traditionally it's
just been a color that men are afraid of, almost
that it's just not masculine. Purple is just a challenging
color in general. I'm trying to think of what purple
(51:44):
like full on purple clothing that I own, and only
one one blouse comes to mind. Yeah, I like a
nice uh, a nice jewel tone purple one that's a
little bit on the redder side and the bluer side.
I gotta say, well, I mean, now we clearly need
some some more purple clothing too to honor prints. Some ruffles,
(52:06):
so many ruffles. Um. I wish that Prince's music rights
weren't so exclusive, so we could have a song maybe
Raspberry Beret or something take us out of this this episode.
Now he would sue the crap out of us. Yeah, Yeah,
from he would sue us from the grave. Yeah no, really,
I bet he would. Yeah yeah, Um, So before we
(52:29):
end up getting sued by ghost Prince listeners, we want
to hear from you about queer fashion, about Prince, your
your favorite Prince looks or songs, anything that this podcast
brought to mind, and you want to share with us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcasts,
(52:50):
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now, So we gotta
let her here. From Heather in response to our episode
on tanning politics, and she writes, listening to your discussion
on farmers stands and your great spray tan politics episode,
(53:11):
I was inspired to write I agree with everything you
said about the different types of tans being markers of class. However,
you might be interested to know that there's been a
recent reclaiming of farmers tands. I'm an organic farmer on
Vancouver Island in Canada, lots of times listening to podcast
while weeding and harvesting. She says, I was miss November
(53:33):
in what was I think the original farmers tans calendar.
It was a fundraiser for the Rainbow Charred Collective, a
group of farmers lgbt Q and allies in particular, who
used the funds to put on workshops for new farmers. Anyway,
a quick Google search shows me that there have been
quite a few other farmer Tans calendars put out by
(53:53):
other groups since then. Nowadays, most people see me as
the middle of the road middle aged farmer, business owner
and soccer mom. But farmers tans is another side of me.
An activists, environmentalists and part of a community of amazing
people of our all ages, genders, and sexualities who love
working hard and getting stuff done. We take pride in
(54:14):
our not sprayed on, not full bodied tans, So thank
you so much. Heather and I had no idea that
there are farmer tans calendars, and I look forward to
Google imaging that asap. I have a letter here from
Sonna in response to our Colorism episode. She says, I'm Sana, sixteen,
(54:34):
Indian and living in Canada. I really appreciated your recent
episode on colorism because it's a very real thing. I'm
fairly light skin so people are usually surprised to find
out that I'm Indian. Some boys have said you don't
look Indian to me and meant it as a compliment.
It's really disheartening because it sends the message the only
way to be an acceptable brown girl is if you're
not really brown at all. On another note, my mom
(54:57):
has really light skin as well, and recently one of
her younger friends got pregnant. This woman asked my mom
whether she did something special or ate anything specific well pregnant,
which made my skin much lighter because she was praying
that her daughter's skin color would be like mine. This
sort of broke my heart because I know that this
woman will love her daughter regardless. The fact that skin
(55:17):
color can affect a person's life even before they are
born is heartbreaking. Anyway, it's a good job with the
podcast and I look forward to hearing more of these
interesting topics. Well, thank you, Sona, and thanks to everybody
who's written into us. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address and thrilling to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs,
(55:37):
videos and podcast with our sources. So you can learn
more about Prince. So you can learn more about queer
fashion and Prince, head on over to stuff Mom Never
told you. Dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
(56:01):
S
How do refrigerators keep food cold? Who really invented the radio?
What was the worst video game of all time? On
Tech Stuff, we answer these questions and more. You can
get brand new episodes of tech Stuff every Wednesday on Spotify,
Google Play, iTunes, and anywhere else you get podcasts. Welcome
(00:25):
to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House top Works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and dearly beloved, we gathered here today
to get through this thing called Prince's death. I know
(00:47):
that's beautiful. Oh my god, Well I didn't write it.
Prince did. Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince Rogers Nelson dead at
and Caroline and I had been planning to do an
EPISO so about queer and androgynous fashion before the tragedy happened,
And as soon as we learned in the Stuff Mom
(01:10):
Never Told You podcast studios that Prince died, we realized that, oh,
this fashion episode, this has got to be for Prince. Yeah,
it's got to be, because honestly, he is the perfect
encapsulation of so many queer and androgynous fashion talking points. Yeah. Well,
(01:32):
and also such an example of how we often think
about androgynous into androgynous fashion, I should say into narrow
terms exactly. He mean, he kind of visually myth busts
what we think of when we think of androgynous fashion,
which I feel like is often like when I think
of it, I think of like a a very thin,
(01:56):
pale person with a bowl cut and a very large,
bulky um T shirt like a long you know, a
Garfield night shirt. I think of Garfield night shirts. That's true.
Who knew it was the height of androgyneus fashion. But
I mean as soon though, as word of Prince's death spread,
(02:19):
we started to see all of these remembrances and appreciations
of him based around his fashion and also his just
like outright gender fluidity and his fashion presentation. Yeah, I
mean it's it was really incredible to see the outpouring
of fans who were celebrating him, not only for his
(02:42):
music because he is a was oh god, was a
hyper talented musician, but just the effect that he had
on people by blowing through this world with such confidence
and sense of self. And he really did not care,
or he outwardly did not appear to care, uh what
(03:05):
people thought of him. I mean he's a guy who
blurred all of the lines with between gender and ethnicity
and sexuality. I mean, for him, it was about the art,
and I think that that inspired so many kids of
whatever gender or sexuality. Well, and all of that too
reflects his music and how he blurred so many different
(03:26):
genres that he just seemed to also instantly master. Um. So,
before we get into a beautiful timeline of princess clothes,
which I can't wait for, um, and I can't wait
to tell you what my favorite outfit of his is
that I really want, Um, let's talk a little bit
about the history and evolution of androgynous or queer fashion
(03:51):
that really toyed with in Trench gender norms. Yeah, and
we we've kind of already addressed this idea that we
tend to think of androgynous fashion is basically skinny white
women donning men's wear, despite the fact that the word
androgynous means of indeterminate sex. Because when you think about it,
like what does androgyn is fashion in magazines, for instance,
(04:14):
tend to look like, right, it does tend to be
some skinny model, you know, like maybe she's got her
head shaved. But it does tend to be like white
women wearing button ups or loafers or something, and in
very muted tones, there would have been no purple. No,
no purple at all. Um. But what's so great about
(04:35):
Prince and why we wanted to tie him into this
conversation is because by adopting the frills and the heels,
and the glitter and the hair due and the polka dog. Yeah,
don't forget the crop tops and the peek a boo
laser cut yellow chaps. Uh. He really showed us that
androgynous fashion is more than some skinny white person in
(05:00):
a magazine, that it is men adopting other looks as well.
And he also proved that you actually can you being
really only Prince Rogers Nelson can make peek a boo
laser cut yellow chaps work. Yeah, Oh for sure. And
I mean the shoulder pads on them. Really, I mean
(05:20):
you know, I don't know the shoulder pads in the chaps.
Shoulder pads would be amazing. Yeah, would those be hip
hip pads? I don't know. Um. But first, okay, yeah,
like christ and said, let's first dive into the history
and evolution of what we're calling queer or androgynous fashion,
not that those two are necessarily the same thing, but
you know, there's a venn diagram um and a lot
(05:42):
of this information we need to credit to Marlon Coomar,
who read a fabulous history in Bustle, Kimberly Christmin Campbell,
who read a great article about this in The Atlantic,
and Emily Eldridge, who wrote a thesis in the Journal
of Anthropology. And as we walk through the history of
queer fashion, we're also walking through the history of how
(06:03):
people looked at gender. Yeah, I mean, because before there
was a time when our clothing wasn't gendered at all.
Pretty much everyone was wearing tunics, you know, everyone was
wearing those Garfield t shirts around Caroline perfect. So as
fashion as we think about it today develops, it does
gradually go through this gendering process that takes a while.
(06:27):
But as Joe Barracklaw Palletti notes in her book Pink
and Blue, Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, quote,
gender distinctions are among the oldest and most widespread functions
of dress. And if we look, for instance, though at
a in fourteen thirty one, at Joan of arc I mean,
she's kind of the original androgyny pioneer, because one of
(06:51):
the reasons why she was denounced by the Inquisition and
burned alive was because she really claimed that it was
God's command for her to win air men's clothes, keep
her hair cut short, and keep quote no garment which
might indicate her sex. Her fashion was on fire. Yeah,
I mean hash I too soon, um, but that right there,
(07:15):
no garment which might indicate her sex. That's the definition
of androgeny, right. That is, someone who would not necessarily
be the definition of sexless would be uh, Louie, not
by not by any stretch. If if Joan of arc
was plane tunic sexless bowl cut. Yeah, and now I'm
(07:40):
just picturing Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men,
which is not I'm my brain is like leaving me
behind on a tangent. But anyway, Louis in the eighteenth
century totally decked himself out in colorful fabric, lace, ribbons, jewels,
feather and embroidery, and he really embodied the idea and
(08:01):
the concept that you can be powerful and masculine but
also pretty because honestly, wearing all this stuff showed off
your wealth. Oh yeah, I mean because before fashion really
became signals of gender. That kind of opulent, almost prince
esque fashion would have signaled wealth and status. No one
(08:22):
would have seen Louis the fourteenth and been like, well,
someone's a pretty feminine in his wardrobe, because I mean,
at that time it was money really that equaled masculinity.
So I mean, there's no worries that someone might think
you too fancified. I mean, of course, Louis the fourteenth
also famously wore his high heels that had red souls
(08:46):
on them, and only he in the court was allowed
to wear the red souled um high heels, which of
course now are the trademark look of Lubaton high heels.
But then soon enough women started co opting high heels.
But then you get the gendering, not of heels and
flats like flats for dudes, but just a widening of heels.
(09:10):
Like guys were like, okay, you know what we're gonna
We're gonna keep wearing these high heels. Ladies are short
and do it too. It's okay, we'll just wear a
chunky heel. Guys, everybody get the memo. Is a chunky
heel for dudes, narrow heels for the ladies. I want
to get that memo yield heeldie memo. Is there a
newsletter that went out? I mean they have like a
little pigeon facts service. Is he about to creed chunky
(09:33):
heel theilnail that to a church store? Um? And in
the nineteenth century we see the emergence of the London dandy. Uh.
This guy is is super fashionable and he is what
we would today label effeminine, carrying a basically just a
bunch about his appearance. And at the same time, though,
on the lady side of things, you've got advocates for
(09:55):
reform dress. Kristen and I have talked about reform dress
a lot on the podcast, and this is women adopting bloomers,
trashing their heavier garb because people are like, oh wait,
like if I fall in the water, I'll drown because
my clothes are so heavy, and also I can't breathe
and my rib cage and organs are misshapen. Now, so really,
before we had the second wave feminists throwing their bras
into a trash can on the Atlantic City boardwalk in
(10:17):
the late sixties, we have the reform dress suffragist throwing
their they're heavy skirts in a what would they have
just like a fire, an old fire, sure, a fire
or I don't know why. I'm assuming they didn't have
trash cans. They threw them into the back of a
buggy and hit the horse on the butt, so it
(10:38):
ran away. Is that is that elaborate enough? I think
that I think that's that's true. Um, But of course
the um, the dandie fashion would wear away, just quick note. Um,
it's evident in the song Yankee Doodle Dandy. That's when
we see, now I'm serious, when we see this dandy
a sentiment becoming reviled as like oh no, guys, like
(11:03):
we we need to get serious with our clothes. And
it was actually something called the Great Masculine Renunciation, which
was this kind of fashion turning point in the later
eighteen hundreds where men were like, okay, send out another
pigeon memo. We need to start wearing way more boring clothes.
So this is when we just get suits kind of yeah,
(11:25):
it's like leading the way to the suit. Interesting, but
what and you know, we'll get into this. But the suit,
which is like boring standard man uniform, would become radical women.
So yeah, I mean you just get the boring gray
like coat and pants and shoes until Caroline, is it
(11:46):
pants or a pant? Lord Stacy London, London, where are
you somewhere wearing a pant? Yeah? Probably a pant or
cropped pants since its spring. Oh maybe, um well, cool
lots are back. Oh god, um okay. So in the
early twentieth century, Paul Poire sets women free. We've done
a whole episode on this man, which I highly encouraged
(12:08):
that you go listen to. But his freewheeling, lucy goosey
designs freed women from their corsets and ushered in in
dresses kind of a long, lean, impure wiste, as Stacy
London would say. But his designs also included harem pants.
(12:29):
I remember when what was the daughter's name, the youngest
daughter's name in Downton Abbey, Sybil Sybil. She came home,
uh with with some harem panned outfits and then look
what happened to her spoiler spoiler um. And again what's
going on simultaneously is you have that famous Coco Chanel
(12:49):
creating a more masculine silhouette for fashionable ladies of the
time because she believed that you should be able to
dress in a way that expresses you pant or skirt, whatever.
But if we look at Hollywood and women's androgynous fashion,
it starts to arise in the nineteen thirties and forties,
(13:12):
kind of sporadically. Um, but really the androgynous fashion fashion
plate would have been Marlena Diedrich, who um in a
film of hers whose name is Escaping Me right Now,
where she plays a cabaret performer. She has a scene
where she comes out looking amazing in a top hat
(13:35):
and tuxedo and she kisses a woman on the lips. Scandalous. Well,
and Marlena Dietrich, let's bring it full circle for stuff
I've never told you fans. She was friends with Anime Wong,
who we talked about in our episode about um, the
fetishization of Asian women. Um. But Dietrich even off screen
(13:57):
with sport pants and even a suit from time to time,
just like Katherine Hepburn. That's right, Katherine Hepburn, daughter of
a suffragist who I'm pretty sure and you know, listeners,
you can always tell us if you're interested in this,
I want to do it anyway. I kind of She
was the daughter of a suffragist, and I want to
do a double episode on Katherine Hepburn and her mom
(14:19):
because they were such impressive ladies together. But writing about Hepburn,
Coomar talks about and I don't know if I had
heard this story before, I had not, so writing about
Katherine Hepburn in particular, uh Comar says that Hepburn threatened
film executives with walking around set in her underwear when
(14:40):
they swiped her pant outfit. Yeah, Hepburn was like, well,
I'm going to wear my my pants or my panties exactly. Um.
When we get to the nineteen fifties after World War Two,
this is when we first have the development, slowly but surely,
the divi elopment of even the term gender coming to
(15:03):
mean what we think of it today, describing the social
and culturally created and constructed roles that we associate with
biological sex. But that's really happening in the background. Um.
But when it comes to fashion, of course, post World
War Two, I mean it becomes very gender segregated. Dad's
(15:25):
in the suit, Mom is in her Betty Draper costume. Well, yeah,
I mean because Mom was essentially sent back to the
kitchen when dad came back from the war and wanted
his job back. So all of a sudden, again, this
is another a sminty topic that we've tackled before, that
those gender roles, we see them get really entrenched post
war because of men coming back and wanting to reassert
(15:47):
their place in society while their wives had been out working.
And then the nineteen sixties we see a reaction against that.
And Joe Paletti we cited earlier in her book Sex
and Unisex Fashion Feminine Is Them and the Sexual Revolution
talks about how sixties unisex clothes our reaction to that
gender stereotyping and a nod to the idea that gender
(16:11):
and biological sex might not totally equate. But as with
our kind of stereotypical idea of androgynist fashion today, that
fashion focus more on women adopting masculine silhouettes rather than say, oh, well, guys,
here's a skirt for you. Um. But also during this
(16:33):
time we have this London counter culture of the teddy
boys who dressed like Edwardian dandies, and there are so
many fantastic photos of them online, and they had teddy
girl counterparts who wore lots of structured blazers, blouses, and trousers.
They would often still wear skirts but still had um
(16:57):
I mean, I guess you could say semi androgyna suiting
the almost like a Janelle Monet kind of situation. Yes, yes, well,
and especially with their updos to yeah. Yeah. And you're
also seeing the rise of super slender models like Twiggy, who,
while she was obviously a super cute woman, still had
(17:19):
that more flat androgynous figure. And in nineteen sixty six,
years after Marlene Dietrich first sported her tuxedo in that
movie and Kissed a Woman, Eve St Laurent created the
first tuxedo specifically for women, and writing about this creation,
comar sites uh St Lawren's muse Violetta Sanchez, who explained
(17:45):
that it was super radical, especially among the stuffy bourgeois,
that to see women quote take possession of man's attire
and the freedom it gave her. It took her out
of that spot where she was frat Jill. And we'll
see that concept to come up again in the eighties
with one particular musician. Now, I gotta tell you that Caroline,
(18:06):
that St Laurent tuxedo really just kinda looks like a tuxedo,
you know what I mean. It's not like it was
radical at the time, right, I mean, it's a woman
in a tuxedo. But so for listeners, if you're trying
to picture what it looks like, just picture a tuxedo. Um.
Then in nineteen sixty eight, a couple of years later,
(18:28):
you have designers including Pierre Cardan and Paco Raban creating
these unisex almost space ag fashions with a lot of
synthetic fabrics. So ste're clear fires, fires friends, um and
department stores. Very briefly, I mean we're talking only in
nineteen sixty eight. For a few months, got in on
(18:50):
the trend and even set up unisex sections. But then
that kind of gave way to cute, cere non threatening
his in hers fashion, So his and hers versions of
the same kinds of things like the jumpsuits. Hasn't her
jumpsuits that I really want my fiance and I to
gut He doesn't know this yet, Yeah, just uh subtly,
(19:13):
subtly passed this episode along to him. Well, and you
know it's an honor of Prince and all of his
Paisley jumpsuits. So why should we not wear them? That's
what I'm saying, man, uh, you know. And so again
we've been focusing so much on women adopting male silhouettes.
But in these sixties and the same era, rock stars
(19:35):
get in on the fund, people like Jimmy Hendrix, Mick
Jagger and especially David Bowie. These guys start toying with
gender and they're adopting the frills, the hip huggers, the glitter,
the prince and especially the heels. And I hadn't heard
this term before, Caroline Um. But this fashion movement modeled
by these rock as uh is called the Peacock Revolution.
(19:58):
I love it. That emerged in London and it was
coinciding with the decriminalization of homosexuality and also the sexual revolution.
And quick side note, um, if anyone's interested in some
related summer reading, I highly recommend the Oral History. Please
kill me about the punk movement that gets into some
(20:21):
of this stuff. And well, it's interesting though, I mean fashion.
You can never say that fashion is a political because
this Peacock Revolution was not only a way for straight
and buy guys to play with gender and fashion and
looks uh and norms, but it was also a way
(20:42):
for closeted gay men to be able to explore these
looks as well without having to come out of the closet.
If it's part of the fashion trend and it's being
demonstrated by like super masculine sex gods like Mick Jagger
and David Bowie, will in I can get away with
it too and not have to come out as a
(21:04):
gay man. Yet so as opposed to those unisex fashions
designed you know, by those like high end names, it
seems like this movement in the sixties is peacock revolution
is a legit queering of fashion right, because it's definitely
not taking the sex, and I mean that as both
(21:25):
biological sex and sex sex. It's not removing it from
the clothes or from the person wearing them. If anything,
it is emphasizing the sex of the person wearing it.
Whether that is a woman in a like a sci
fi movie and she's wearing a quote unquote unisex tunic
but of course it shows off her figure, or whether
(21:46):
that is someone like Mick Jagger and hip huggers or
David Bowie and his many many outfits, it's still emphasizes
the sex of the person but you're right, this is
when we start to see the queering of fashion and all.
This continues along with punk music into the seventies and
eighties with bands like the New York Dolls. And you
see trends though, um that you now see in I
(22:08):
want to say it was it's really popular in South
Korea of guys and girls dressing exactly alike, wearing the
same clothes. Um. And you also have trends at home
of non gendered child rearing that sounds a lot like
what we hear about in terms of parenting today. And
in terms of high fashion, you have Halston's Ultra Suade
(22:32):
shirt dress that was a feminine twist on men's wear.
So what Halston did was basically take a button down shirt,
lengthen it, belt it, and sway defy it, sway defy it. Perfect. Yeah.
And so while working women are adopting trousers and pikats
and dress shirts, men are sporting mandarin collar jackets, tunics, turtlenecks,
(22:57):
ponchas and Ascot's fair listeners. Just google unisex ponchos from
the seventies and just look at the glory that is
these crochet atrocities of men and women wearing matching ponchos.
It's both wonderful and terrible. You know what I would
rather have than matching jumpsuits with mamboo matching calftans. This
(23:22):
was the era of the calftan. And I mean, what
is there a more regal and comfortable garment that someone
can wear than a calftan? I would submit that there
is not. But I love this evolution here because going
from the New York dolls, so you've got again like
these rockers who are wearing full on makeup, um, you know,
(23:47):
down to the couple pool side in Palm Springs sporting
their caftans caftans and getting calf tansy. So moving into
the eighties, and we should put a little asterisk here
because people late seventies early eighties is when prints is emerging.
(24:09):
In the eighties, we see fashions start to retreat back
along gender lines, because nothing is anything more than a
reaction to something else, right, and so you've had all
of the like genderless child rearing type of things going
on in the seventies. But then you see in the
eighties women you know, needing to be heavily made up
(24:29):
with their hair done in in dresses again in men
in power suits, but like, yes, that's all true, but
women were wearing very masculine women's where too, what with
their shoulder pads and power suits and stripes on their suits,
and so then we start to see the queering of
those suits when women put them on. So you've got
(24:51):
people like Annie Lennox with her orange pixie cut, her
pinstriped suits, bright lipstick, and she herself is super slender
and androgynous looking. And then you've got megastar Grace Jones
walking that line between sexy, undeniable woman and basically androgynous
(25:13):
alien from matter space. Oh, Grace Jones, Caroline, we should
also do an episode on her, just so we can
luxuriate in her flat top pursuits, her lipstick, her just musculature,
everything that outwardly expressed her complete and total self possession. Um.
(25:35):
For instance, she has this fabulous quote on when she says,
I never asked for anything in a relationship because I
have this sugar daddy I've created for myself, and it's me.
I am my own sugar daddy. I have a very
strong male side which I developed to protect my female side,
and if I want diamond necklace, I can go and
(25:56):
buy myself a diamond necklace. Yeah. I remmember seeing Grace
Jones when I was really little and like I r
L Yeah, no, I mean I didn't go see her,
but I mean like in magazines or whatever, and just
being like, this person is unlike any person I have
seen before, because she was she she was in such
(26:20):
like she had just such self possession. Like you said,
she was fully in control of this powerful, androgynous but
still sexy image. And then when you move into the
nineties and you move away from the Grace Jones silhouette,
you see the revival of the what we saw in
(26:42):
the like sixties and seventies and eighties in terms of
punk and men and women dressing alike in leather jackets
and jeans and boots and whatever. Because in the emergence
of grunge you see again men and women sporting the
same flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and Doc Martins. But then
of course you have people like Kurt Cobain wearing baby
(27:04):
doll dresses, pigtails, eyeliner, and women's sunglasses and Caroline I've
gotta tell you, I just realized that m today as
we're recording this episode, I am wearing a very um
my so called life angela Chase esque baby doll dress.
Did not plan it, but um, I feel very I
feel like I'm really close to the subject now. I'm
(27:25):
pretty sure I had that dress in seventh grade. Thank you,
pearl buttons and all. It's it's very comfortable. So we
got a hot back a little bit in our timeline
to start off our Prince timeline, because he really gets
going in terms of his public presentation in the late
seventies and early eighties, and really from the get go,
(27:49):
I mean he's just putting it all out there fashion
wise and kind kind of literally too, putting it out
there in the sense of wearing like THI highs and
bikini bottoms on stage age, much to the chagrin of
Rolling Stones fans who he originally opened for. Um but
he was always blurring those lines between masculine and feminine fashion. Yeah,
(28:15):
and I want to hit on some of the some
of the high notes, some of the print signatures before
we dive into this timeline. So what's been really interesting
is to follow these trends that he sets and sets
for himself, including his sunglasses, you know, he sported everything
from asymmetrical eight shades to granny glasses two more recently,
(28:35):
those third eye sunglasses, so they're big and round and
dark and include one lens over his forehead third eye,
third eye. Yeah. And and of course the hair, whether
it was long and flowy curls, worn as a natural
afrow or in an updo secured with a scarf. And
don't forget the perfectly waxed brows, the perfectly defined mustache
(29:00):
and beard, and the perfectly defined eyeliner. And don't forget
about those signature high heels. Um. He famously told Rolling
Stone people say I'm always wearing heels, because I'm sure
he was five too, by the way, but he said,
I wear heels because the women like them. Yeah. And
just like with the whole peacock revolution idea, as Vanessa
(29:22):
Friedman writ in The New York Times, on women, He'll
suggest sex Prince showed they could function the same way
for men. But I mean he wore them all the time.
And Mike Tyson's memoir which no, we did not read,
this was just cited in an article. Um, And Mike
Tyson's memoir, he claims, And I believe it that Prince
wore them to play basketball. Why not? I mean to me, like,
(29:45):
heels don't even look weird on Prince because they're just
so him. I kind of imagined that, Um, Prince's feet
looked like Barbie feet. They're just like already curved and
and ready to slip into a perfectly fitting he'll. I
love that so much. Um Okay, so we've got to
go back to like mid androgeny queering fashion timeline to
(30:08):
nine because the cover of his second album is just
him shirtless with flowing wavy hair. But the back, the
back of that album is him naked on a Pegasus.
So does being naked on a Pegasus count as queer fashion?
(30:30):
I don't know, man, it definitely counts as print fashion
counts as amazing. Yeah. Oh, I wonder how many people
will in in Memoriam get prints on a Pegasus tattoos.
I'm just saying throwing it out there. Um in Uh.
He rolls up to this place called Flippers Roller Disco
(30:53):
Boogie Lounge, Want to Go in Los Angeles wearing a
tank top, bandana, thigh highs, and black underwear, and in
his dirty Mind and controversy era, he often just sported
a trench coat, bikini, briefs again the thigh highs, and
a net kerchief. And uh, it took people a minute
to get used to this. But if you look at
(31:14):
the lyrics of a single controversy, you know he's already
over it. He says, Uh, some people call me rude.
I wish we all were nude. I wish there was
no black or white. I wish there were no rules. Yeah,
so he's fully aware. I mean he has never been
anything but genuinely that which is blurring those lines. Wishing
(31:35):
we were nude and there were no rules. Yeah, I
mean he lived as if there were no rules. He
was on Pegasus, is on pegasus, is in heels. You know,
we can't see his feet on the pegasus, so I
bet if we could see the full photo, he would
be No, he would probably be in heels. Who knows,
I mean yeah, because you can't really see anything from
(31:57):
the waist down. He could be in those thigh highs.
But again, and like, here's an example of him blurring,
like what would be on a woman super sexy to
the point of almost inappropriate and titilating, like perhaps a
stripper would be wearing that on stage, but also blending
it with like a flasher in the park on this dude,
(32:20):
and I mean, and it just was him. It was
so him, And I think it's so funny, not funny,
but weird and ironic that Rolling Stones fans were booing
and throwing stuff because hello, we just cited Mick Jagger
as part of that whole Peacock revolution of blurring those
gender and fashion lines and part of like queering fashion
twenty years earlier, and here they are booing him. And
(32:42):
it was really fascinating to go back and read um
a piece on prints in the New York Times from
one where already music critics were like, Okay, this this
guy is something. He's already a legend, and they were
fawning over or his um ability to mix music styles
(33:04):
and his just like sheer talent because he played and
produced and saying everything. But also to the critic, rights,
the music transcends racial stereotyping precisely because it's almost all prints.
Prince himself transcends racial stereotyping because, as he wants put it,
I never grew up in one particular culture. And you
(33:27):
can see this critic throughout the piece kind of grappling
with this this vision of Prince not only what he's hearing,
but how that collides with what he sees. That's right.
And in four, what we see is the emergence of
that iconic purple look with the ruffled shirts. It's the
(33:49):
look that Dave Chappelle war on The Chapelle Show, and
it totally echoes Louis the four. And so it was
under the eye of designer Marief Frands that he got
his Purple Rain look. The ruffles, the pearl studded purple jackets,
the pink feather shoulder piece, the stacked boots and kristen yes,
(34:10):
the Paisley jumpsuits. And when he accepted his oscar for
the film Purple Rains soundtrack not not Purple Rains, you
know the screenplay. Um, when he won that, he accepted
it in a black pant suit, black lace gloves and
a glittering purple shawl and heels. But his two um
(34:34):
lady musicians, the Revolution that he played with, they were
wearing the Purple Rains suiting, which was just a I mean,
you created a fabulous trio affair. Well yeah, because I
can't remember which woman it was, but she was wearing
his brocade suit with the pink feather shoulder piece, and
you see pictures of him wearing the exact same outfit
(34:56):
because he was tiny, just like a lady. Oh you
think that they wore this same I mean it was
the exact same shoulder piece. I wouldn't be surprised if
it was the same suit. I can't imagine Prince sharing clothes.
Could you imagine what would be like for her to be?
Like if Prince is like, yeah, you can borrow my
purple rain suit, be like, no, there's no I could.
(35:17):
I couldn't possibly. You do whatever Prince tells you use anyway.
One one of my favorite tour looks, though, came in
with his tour for the album Parade, where he was
all about the crop tops. Gosh, um, listeners, I'm a
fan of crop tops. Yes, I'm thirty one and I
wear crop tops because why not? Um, I you know,
(35:41):
since a lot of Glazer does it all the time
on Broad City, I say it's okay for me to um.
But he's wearing in one of the photos on Getty
that's been circulating a lot, this asymmetrical black crop top
with a row of white buttons and I want it
not be asymmetrical style, but just like the black with
the white buns. Real big fan. I mean he looks great.
(36:06):
What wasn't he also wearing like bell bottom trousers or
something with that. I think he was wearing just like
tight pants in the bottom. I mean all of his
pants were. We're tight in that air. He got a
little looser as he got older. Well, two years after
the Parade tour, after he released Loves Sexy and that's
the one with a naked prince floating amid giant purple
(36:26):
flowers on the cover with his arm draped over his nipples. Uh,
he was super big into sporting this black and white
polka dot blouse with an oversized collar, matching white and
black polka dot high waisted pants and of course heels,
um Caroline. They were matching polka dot heels. And this
(36:48):
is my favorite prince look because I love a polka
dot and it's almost like the blouse style is kind
of like a high necked pussybow blouse that we still
see today. I've got a couple in my closet, so
I'm like, oh, black pussy bow blows with the you know,
white dots and those high waist pants, but the high heels,
(37:09):
black and white polka dot high heels. Hello, it was
just a fabulous look. Yeah, it was fabulous and so feminine,
you know. But but on Prince it was just Prince.
It wasn't masculine or feminine. It was just sexy Prince
wearing polka dots. Yeah. Have you ever I'm trying to
think if I've ever seen cin a fella in polka
(37:31):
dotted pants, and nothing is coming to mind, Nothing does
come to mind except Prince all right, and on MTV
for his performance of Get Off with the New Power Generation, This,
my friends, is when he sports these spectacular yellow laser
cut I'll just say bottomless suit, which, of course the top,
(37:55):
the suit top, complete with shoulder pads, was a crop
top ston uh and yeah, and heels yellow, matching heels
to match the fantastic suit. Yeah. I don't think he
never wore anything but heels. Right, No, nothing, Can you
imagine Prince and flip flops? Just no, right, because the
Barbie Yeah yeah, just like Barbie can't walk in flip flops. Yeah, exactly.
(38:19):
And if we look at the early two thousand's, he's
still wearing tailored suits, but they're so bright and vivid,
as opposed to that monochromatic palette that we usually associate
with supposedly androgynous fashion. Um. One of those looks, though,
came in two thousand four, where he was supporting a
(38:40):
look that we would really never seen before, although you
could say that about each one of Prince's looks. Um.
But he was wearing his hair straight and it was
about shoulder length, had a long goatee, and these asymmetrical
red and white eighties sunglasses and like, if you have
not told the obats Prince, I would not have known. Well,
(39:02):
it was for the Essence Music Festival, and his reasoning
was that he was tired of being the center of attention.
And I'm like, you're freaking adorable. I love that. Like
when Prince wants to wear a disguise because he's tired
of being the center of attention, he just sticks out
that much more. He's like, let me just straighten my
hair and put on these very obvious sunglasses. Is anyone looking?
(39:27):
Is anyone looking? Um? Yeah? And I mean this our timeline.
I mean we could talk forever. I mean one of
his last iconic trends was his tunics. I mean he
wore a white studded one to Coachella in two thousand eight.
More recently, he wore the whole gold outfit and that's
(39:49):
when he was sporting his third eye sonnies Um. I mean,
the the guy is like one in one in a trillion.
I mean, there's no one like him fashion wise. But
because of that, because of his line blurring and his
you know, give no flips attitude, it really opened the
door for other people to be able to explore their
(40:12):
own identities through fashion, to explore their own tunic phases,
which I really hope to reach one day. Just be patient.
I'm just saying it. I mean, because we we have
to mention though, when he changed his name to the
Love symbol, which was the mix of the Mars and
Venus male and female symbols, Um, And he did it
(40:34):
because he wanted to make Warner Brothers mad Um didn't.
He was like, Okay, well you want to use my
name and you own my stuff, well I'm going to
change my name to something that you can't even print. Um.
And he wanted to brand himself and illustrate these parts
of his identity which were the fusions of the masculine
(40:54):
and feminine as he saw it. Yeah, and the designer
behind the symbol, one of the two or three designers
behind the symbol, which is of course the mix of
the Mars and Venus symbols. Uh told Wired that Prince
really wanted to mix the feminine and masculine energy because
he was working with all of these women that he
(41:18):
wanted to see boosted to fame, and so he saw
those elements of male female, masculine, feminine as being equally
important and wanted to integrate them. And this designer, Mitch Monson,
said he was about approaching things differently and not discriminating.
He was making this unified statement that everybody should be accepted.
(41:39):
So in addition to doing things like writing slave on
his face and changing his name to a symbol to
irritate Warner Brothers, he was also just as part of
that expressing that duality that he's so famous for. And
his confidence in carrying that duality was key. I mean,
it didn't matter what you thought of him. Prince is
(41:59):
just going a Prince. And one thing that Travell Anderson
over at the l A Times talked about in his
remembrances of Princes how he opened the door for black
men to explore gender, sexuality, and fashion. He wrote, this
image of a secure and assured black man embracing both
the masculine and the feminine is what I remember most
(42:21):
of the musician, although I wasn't alive, the YouTube video
of the moment became a reference point for this gender
nonconforming man. Travilla is referring to himself who needed permission
to be himself, and he goes on to say that
Prince taught me how to transgress gender roles and this
is something pretty revelatory for black men in particular. Yeah,
(42:46):
because Anderson writes black men in his community grapple with
those limiting gender expectations. Anderson rights, even now, black people
more often find themselves born into the suffocating box that
Hugh's too close lead to an identity that doesn't fully
encapsulate our complexities. In Nuance, Anderson calls gender a straight jacket,
(43:07):
but that it wasn't this way for Prince, who found
a way to break free. He writes that Prince was
a persona that was masculine and feminine and the world
had to deal and he also talks about what a
statement it made that Prince was so uh so sexual
in his presentation as well, considering all of the racist
(43:28):
stereotyping around the hyper sexualization um of black men and
perceiving their sexuality blackmail sexuality as predatory. And yet here
you have Prince who is arguably one of the most
sexual pop stars of all time. Yeah, and I have
to read this quote from Frank Ocean. I know it's
(43:50):
been circulating a ton on the Internet since Prince died,
but Frank Ocean put it this way. Quote he learned
early on how little value you to assign to someone
else's opinion of you, an infectious sentiment that seemed soaked
into his clothes, his hair, his walk, his guitar, and
his primal scream. He was a straight black man who
(44:11):
played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee
high heeled boots epic. He made me feel more comfortable
with how I identify sexually simply by his display of
freedom from an irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender
conformity and so then, basically, when you try to find
(44:32):
a definition for what queer fashion is, that can be
really challenging to pin it down. But Prince showed us
what it could be, and Randy Shandrowski, who's the CEO
of label Lactic uh, said, yeah, you know, queer style
is hard to define because it's a rejection of that
(44:54):
dualistic thinking that would place a person into a category
of being this or that. It is more about the
disintegration of definitions. And so based on that definition, that
non definition definition, it really seems like Princes the epitome
of that because his whole identity was shaped in a
(45:14):
way that broke down all of those barriers and made
it possible for people to look at him and say,
you're just you, and I mean I can be just
me then well, on every single level, from his music
and his relationships with recording studios, to his fashion to
(45:35):
his just his day to day life, he embodied a
freedom of expression constantly. And if we look at queer
and androgynous fashion today, um F I T director Valerie
Steele says that designers are really kind of questioning clothing binaries,
(45:56):
you know, questioning whether we really need male versus female dress,
and you're seeing more clothes on runways that are androgynous or,
as she says, with similar or the same looks for
men and women. But the thing is like that that
is one definition of androgyny, but that is not what
Prince was doing. I mean, he was creating something altogether
(46:18):
different too, So I think that also goes to show
how he's even more of a visual definition of what
queer fashion can be beyond our matching caftans. That's right,
That's exactly right. And I mean, if you look at
the landscape today, it's super common to see men coming
(46:38):
down the runway in skirts, those pussy bow blouses, fur coats,
pink all of these things that are like so have
been the domain of women and feminine people. You also,
it's super common also to see women in sharp suits
and minimal makeup. You've got more trans models walking in shows,
and I mean, I know this is just me and
(46:58):
I have like a feminist, gender focused podcast, but like,
I don't even think twice about this stuff. I don't.
I don't think twice about a man in address, whether
it's for a women's line or a men's line or
trans models. It's just like, yeah, okay, it's just bodies
showing off clothes. But I think the real evidence of
a cultural shift is that we're seeing it not just
(47:18):
on the runway but also on sidewalks, because all this
too is making me think of Chinas and dramed on
is the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and how he absolutely plays
around with his fashion. The episode the season where he's
clearing at his closet. Oh my gosh, I love it
so much. Can we just do a Kimmi Schmidt episode
(47:39):
just so you and I can just watch Kimmi Schmidt
over and over over and I go, yeah, Well, you
do have more and more designers creating unisex lines amid
this climate of more and more people refusing to want
to identify as specifically male or female, and Johnny Johansson,
who's the founder of ACNE, said, I've seen this new
generation's attitude to fashion where the cut, the shape, and
(48:01):
the character of the garment is more the crucial thing,
rather than seeking approval from society or to follow set norms,
which is totally prints. I mean you even have Kanye
West sporting some black velvet mid calf heeled boots in Paris.
I mean this is he wishes he could be Prints though.
Oh yeah, I mean Kanye cannot come close to Prince No, no,
(48:24):
offense Kim k. Yeah, for all this time she listens
to us secret listener. Um. But you're also seeing some stores,
to some higher end stores that are eliminating men's and
women's sections. Um. This is something that we talked about
in our Fashion and Feminism episode a while back, and
(48:46):
in terms of women in our everyday presentations. I mean
think about how you know, swimsuit season again is upon us,
and ladies are foregoing the razors, um and calling on
us to free our nipples. Yeah, but you're also seeing
Peacock Revolution part two or maybe part thirty. I don't
(49:07):
know where we are at this point, but you've got
rappers like Atlanta's Young Thug, who you know, talks about
shopping in the women's section for better and tighter fitting
genes and appears in magazines wearing tool dresses. And you know,
it's just it's nothing that's going to go away, nor
should it. If anything, we're gonna just keep moving towards
(49:29):
that androgynous fashion future. I highly doubt that that ever
means that it's going to like completely erase gender lines
and fashion. But it's just this whole conversation has just
been evidence that Prince has always been at the cutting
edge of that queering of fashion. Yeah, I mean, because
(49:50):
I also don't think that androgynous fashion is somehow better
or even say like more feminists than more gender trade
aditional fashion styles. It's more about that element of freedom
of expression. Are we free to be able to dress
in a way that we feel most comfortable in? Um
(50:10):
and really quickly, Caroline talking about young young thug shopping
in the women's section, It reminds me too of the
college town that you and I attended college in, which
is a music town, very much. And I knew a
few um rocker fellas who wore women's genes for the
(50:33):
type fit my boyfriend in college did or after college. Yeah,
I mean yeah, because it wasn't It wasn't a super
popular look yet, the whole skinny Jaine thing in terms
of mainstream But Valerie Steel, the fashion historian and f
I T director, also had a really notable thing to
say about why women in masculine clothes that whole trend
(50:56):
has been more successful over time than the more recent
things that we've been seeing of men in more traditionally
feminine clothes. And she said, if men are the ones
who are in power, there's always going to be a
limit to people who want to look like the powerless.
So in a way, I mean that goes to show
even more how Prince's looks. We're so transgressive. Yeah, I
(51:22):
I just I love to sort of fall into daydreams
about Prince's fashion and how he adopted purple because it's
the color of royalty, and purple is like traditionally it's
just been a color that men are afraid of, almost
that it's just not masculine. Purple is just a challenging
color in general. I'm trying to think of what purple
(51:44):
like full on purple clothing that I own, and only
one one blouse comes to mind. Yeah, I like a
nice uh, a nice jewel tone purple one that's a
little bit on the redder side and the bluer side.
I gotta say, well, I mean, now we clearly need
some some more purple clothing too to honor prints. Some ruffles,
(52:06):
so many ruffles. Um. I wish that Prince's music rights
weren't so exclusive, so we could have a song maybe
Raspberry Beret or something take us out of this this episode.
Now he would sue the crap out of us. Yeah, Yeah,
from he would sue us from the grave. Yeah no, really,
I bet he would. Yeah yeah, Um, So before we
(52:29):
end up getting sued by ghost Prince listeners, we want
to hear from you about queer fashion, about Prince, your
your favorite Prince looks or songs, anything that this podcast
brought to mind, and you want to share with us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcasts,
(52:50):
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now, So we gotta
let her here. From Heather in response to our episode
on tanning politics, and she writes, listening to your discussion
on farmers stands and your great spray tan politics episode,
(53:11):
I was inspired to write I agree with everything you
said about the different types of tans being markers of class. However,
you might be interested to know that there's been a
recent reclaiming of farmers tands. I'm an organic farmer on
Vancouver Island in Canada, lots of times listening to podcast
while weeding and harvesting. She says, I was miss November
(53:33):
in what was I think the original farmers tans calendar.
It was a fundraiser for the Rainbow Charred Collective, a
group of farmers lgbt Q and allies in particular, who
used the funds to put on workshops for new farmers. Anyway,
a quick Google search shows me that there have been
quite a few other farmer Tans calendars put out by
(53:53):
other groups since then. Nowadays, most people see me as
the middle of the road middle aged farmer, business owner
and soccer mom. But farmers tans is another side of me.
An activists, environmentalists and part of a community of amazing
people of our all ages, genders, and sexualities who love
working hard and getting stuff done. We take pride in
(54:14):
our not sprayed on, not full bodied tans, So thank
you so much. Heather and I had no idea that
there are farmer tans calendars, and I look forward to
Google imaging that asap. I have a letter here from
Sonna in response to our Colorism episode. She says, I'm Sana, sixteen,
(54:34):
Indian and living in Canada. I really appreciated your recent
episode on colorism because it's a very real thing. I'm
fairly light skin so people are usually surprised to find
out that I'm Indian. Some boys have said you don't
look Indian to me and meant it as a compliment.
It's really disheartening because it sends the message the only
way to be an acceptable brown girl is if you're
not really brown at all. On another note, my mom
(54:57):
has really light skin as well, and recently one of
her younger friends got pregnant. This woman asked my mom
whether she did something special or ate anything specific well pregnant,
which made my skin much lighter because she was praying
that her daughter's skin color would be like mine. This
sort of broke my heart because I know that this
woman will love her daughter regardless. The fact that skin
(55:17):
color can affect a person's life even before they are
born is heartbreaking. Anyway, it's a good job with the
podcast and I look forward to hearing more of these
interesting topics. Well, thank you, Sona, and thanks to everybody
who's written into us. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address and thrilling to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs,
(55:37):
videos and podcast with our sources. So you can learn
more about Prince. So you can learn more about queer
fashion and Prince, head on over to stuff Mom Never
told you. Dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
(56:01):
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