Research team
Expertise
My main expertise can be identified in the critical understanding of the socio-cultural and political relationship between fashion and masculinities. Thus, my academic work develops at the intersection of three specific fields of research: (men's) fashion studies, critical studies on men and masculinities, and queer studies. My PhD project, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and conducted in the Faculty of Social Sciences, represented the first attempt at analyzing Antwerp fashion through the lens of the queering of masculinities. The analysis developed through this research project, which focused on the critical fashion practices of internationally recognized Antwerp-trained designers like Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Raf Simons, Bernhard Willhelm and Glenn Martens, has allowed a multifaceted understanding of the relationship between fashion and masculinity through the perspectives of gender, sexuality, and the body, and most importantly, how in the Antwerp fashion scene we can identify an incubator for vanguardist fashion practices characterized by a particular attitude toward designing menswear and representing the male body. This study was based on a qualitative content analysis of (audio)visual and textual materials collected during archival research in Belgian and international (fashion) museums and interviews with relevant personalities from the field who have first-hand experience with the rise of Antwerp fashion. Specifically, after having undertaken a case study approach to achieve a sufficiently in-depth and specific understanding of the selected designers' critical fashion practices, I analyzed the materials collected during archival research through a visual social semiotic reading. The latter can be considered an instrument to reveal things that are not evident at first sight while also bringing to light contradictions between verbal and visual messages. Throughout the research, visual social semiotics helped to highlight how the structure of (audio)visual materials contributed to the representation of non-conforming masculinities. After having addressed the meaning of normative masculinities in relation to (representations of) the dressed body in the theoretical framework, the analysis sought to pinpoint more clearly how the selected designers subvert and transform oppressive and monolithic ideas of masculinity by using the adorned body as a social and political site of opposition that favors individuality and self-determination. The detailed analysis of (audio)visual materials was then supported by the analysis of text-based objects, which provided insights into the designers’ opinions on the critical impetus of their works and on their thinking about gender, masculinity, and sexuality. Fashion invitations, press releases, show reviews as well as newspaper and magazine articles further helped to decode and contextualize the meanings of the collections. Thus, the juxtaposition of (audio)visual and textual evidence provided a method to solidify the meanings emerging from the images or, at times, to highlight the discrepancies between visual and textual meanings. Starting in November 2023, a new postdoctoral project, always funded by the FWO, has allowed me to move my investigation on the critical understanding of the relationship between men and fashion to the realm of everyday life. Consequently, my analysis has moved to the realm of qualitative ethnography. To understand the impact of gendered norms and normative assumptions of masculinity on the dressed male body in everyday life, the project is mainly conducted through the wardrobe studies method, which, by bridging material culture and embodied research methods, is ideal to reconcile the materiality of clothing with the practice of wearing them within wider relational and social contexts.
The Biopolitics of the Dressed Male Body: Understanding Normative Embodied Masculinities in Everyday Life in Belgium and Italy
Abstract
The overall aim of this project is to explore the relationship between clothing and masculinity in non-conforming men's everyday life sartorial practices. Specifically, it will look at the impact of gendered norms on the articulation, policing, and experience of the dressed male body in public space in both Belgium and Italy. This research will consider the dressed male body as a pivotal element in the biopolitics of masculinity by examining the importance of dress practices in biopower's disciplinary and regulatory interventions on the body, a dimension which has been all too often overlooked. This will be done through an ethnographic wardrobe studies investigation. By bridging material culture and embodied research, the project will consider to which extent norms of masculinity restrict the self-expression of the dressed male body, and how this embodied knowledge affects the everyday act of getting dressed. As research on the relationship between men and fashion in everyday life is an area still in need of greater investigation and understanding, this project will extend and expand our understanding of the dressed male body, emphasizing the fundamental role of dress practices as identity-making practices in the biopolitics of masculinity. As such, it aligns with recent scholarly and mainstream concerns with the changing nature of masculinity and with the backlash towards more inclusive forms of male embodiment.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Brajato Nicola
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Reshaping Masculinities: Dress, Body and Identity in the Antwerp Fashion Scene.
Abstract
This research project is the first ever to directly address the relationship between fashion, body and gender identity in the well-known Antwerp fashion scene. Specifically, it will focus on the creative practices of four designers from different generations (Raf Simons, Ann Demeulemeester, Bernhard Willhelm and Glenn Martens) and investigate how they all contributed to reshaping the idea of male aesthetics through a critical approach to menswear. The research is innovative for its multidisciplinary approach at the intersection of fashion studies, men's studies and queer studies. It will combine theories on the construction of masculinity with insights into the role of fashion in creating and questioning embodied gender norms. Methodologically, it will primarily draw on the analysis of visual and audio-visual materials (i.e. fashion show videos and images, catalogues, look books, magazine editorials, etc.) provided by the MoMu fashion museum and other archives, combined with interviews with the designers and relevant personalities from the Antwerp fashion scene. Because of its multidisciplinary character, this project will contribute to several fields: it will strengthen the existing literature on Belgian fashion by providing new insights from a masculinity perspective, put Belgium on the fashion studies map, and add a totally new angle to men's and queer studies in Belgian academia.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Co-promoter: Eeckhout Bart
- Fellow: Brajato Nicola
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Queering Masculinities: The Antwerp Fashion Scene (1985-2015).
Abstract
This study explores the role that Belgian men's fashion played in the redefinition of masculinities from the mid 1980s to the present. More precisely, it examines how the creative practices of a cohort of designers of the world-famous 'Antwerp fashion scene' have made an impact, not just in the fashion scene, but also in society at large, for presenting alternative 'queer' versions of masculinity. By tackling queer identity formation through the process of body-fashioning in the work of Belgian fashion designers, we set out to address two key research questions: 1. How did Belgian fashion designers manage to dismantle pre-existing paradigms of masculinity as well as mold new subversive ones? 2. How was their work of redefining masculinities through fashion related to, and informed by, the visual culture in which they were operating? The time span under consideration encompasses the socio-historical period of the AIDS epidemic up until present time. The choice of this particular context is not haphazard: it was during the 1980s and 1990s that, as a consequence of the epidemic, fashion became quintessential in the shaping of new male corporealities, e.g., hyper-masculinity or androgyny, that would become paradigmatic in the 2000s. Moreover, this is the time frame in which queer theory, namely, a set of theories aimed at denaturalizing heteronormative understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality, emerged in academia, and 'New Queer Cinema' developed, carving out new radical configurations of queerness opposing the clichéd representations of sexuality in mainstream film. Despite the vast existing research on the arts and literature of this period, there is still a huge gap in academic scholarship on the topic of fashion in this historical framework. By filling such an epistemological gap, this project also seeks to dismantle the deep-seated association of fashion with merely frivolous concerns. We believe that fashion represents an important barometer of social change, both reflecting and affecting cultural development, and that, due to its constitutive link with the body, it is meaningful in defining and negotiating our being in the world and our being with others. To shed light on the redefinition of masculinity by the Antwerp fashion scene from the mid 1980s until 2015, this project will examine the work of a group of internationally established menswear designers, all of whom either trained or worked in Belgium, particularly in Antwerp, and gained success worldwide. In order to do this, we will analyze their collections: both the garments and their visual representation in 'lookbooks', clips of catwalk shows, advertising campaigns and fashion editorials. To contextualize these images, we will draw on visual analysis of intertextual references, in particular to film and photography, as well as interviews with the designers. Such analyses will be developed in three stages: archival research; visual analysis; and interviews. This research is constitutively interdisciplinary, insofar as it is situated at the intersection of three main academic disciplines: fashion studies, queer studies, and masculinity studies. This project being one of the first instances of fashion studies in Belgium, it will help put the country on the map of fashion studies by breaking the intellectual disregard for fashion research outside of the Anglo-American context; it will contribute to the development of queer studies in Belgian academia, where queer theory has only slowly penetrated without having yet achieved institutionalization; and it will enrich, through a cross-disciplinary approach, current debates on both fashion as a form of culture and on masculinity as a set of social norms.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Dhoest Alexander
- Fellow: Brajato Nicola
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project