Grayson Perry on the Rise and Fall of Default Man

[Serial_Apologist]

A year or so ago - or maybe two - I ranted colourfully on the Stormy Weather board, I think it was, about an experience I had of shopping for clothes in, as it happened, Sainsbury's, although it could have been virtually any one of our chain clothiers. What I described was aisle upon aisle of female clobber, in all patterns, shapes, sizes, styles, materials and colours, followed by three aisles of children's wear, two of them in pink for, guess which gender? - and ending in just two rows of male attire. One half of one aisle consisted of two-piece suits in dark grey, almost black, this being the only choice of formal attire. The rest of the for-males to consider consisted mainly of puffa jackets, and sweat and T-shirts in mostly black, grey, navy blue or dull maroon, and I remembered the 1960s and 70s when some of the barriers of gender-based sartoriality were being broken down, both as regards the similar range of clothings available for men as for women making shopping such an exciting, colour-filled experience, as well of course as hair growth being equally espoused (no pun). Gay men had undoubtedly led the trend - one remembers pink shirts for blokes becoming acceptable somewhere around 1963 - but there was no need to be gay before going for the softer look that was one of the options back then. (You could also be as macho off the peg as you liked, of course, but that did not automatically mean short back-and-sides and leather jackets; whatever happened to knitted ties??) Then yesterday I wandered around that clothes section once more, and found to my dismay that little had changed in the last two years, choice being as limited as ever for the male half of the population.

Then just now I spotted Grayson Perry's article in last week's New Statesman, and it not only summed up a few dawning ideas of my own that reminded me of the heady days when feminism was what it said on the tin, but brought to mind some of the issues John Berger touched on in his early 1970s TV series "Ways of Seeing" about how gender stereotyping represents and contributes to maintaining power relations within capitalism, and how this manifests.

Here is Grayson's article - I just thought it worthwhile to share it as an observational perspective without expecting many replies here , if any:

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/grayson-perry-rise-and-fall-default-man

[Richard Tarleton]

A fascinating article and post, S_A. A few random jottings:

There is also an urban/rural (or metropolitan/county) dimension to sartorial style, which is why I find my occasional trips to the big city so fascinating. In my line of work dress sense for outdoors for both sexes tended towards the functionally androgynous (fleeces, jeans, cargo pants, Goretex...). I shop for clothes as little as possible, but when I do it is either at one of those outdoor clothing chains, department stores which have sections devoted to particular makes or designers (esp. at sale time), or one of those traditional gents outfitters, found in country towns, that are largely bypassed by fashion. They usually have sections devoted to the sort of clothes worn by rural land agents and surveyors - corduroy trousers, Tattersall shirts, mustard-coloured waistcoats, tweed jackets, waxed outer wear - and of course brown shoes.

I have a pink shirt which is a particular favourite. But when I was sent off to boarding school at a tender age, my father went shopping for the stuff I needed at the NAAFI - and the only pyjamas they had in my size were pink. He bought them . The sartorial equivalent of Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue

[Mary Chambers]

I haven't read the article yet, but I do have opinions about men's clothes. When I was a child I used to think it must be dreadful to be a boy, condemned for ever to grey flannel. So DULL. I was relieved when this altered a bit in the sixties and seventies, and especially because I had two sons born in the early seventies. At least they could wear bright colours, though clothes for girls still seemed much more creative and interesting. Now I have a granddaughter, who (thank heaven) is still too young to insist on the dreary, drab clothes teenagers seem to like. I love buying clothes for her.

At the moment, fashions for both male and female adults seem quite boring, even ugly, to me. That may be a sign of age!

[jean]

I love Grayson Perry, but there's no way I would want to dress like him - it's always surprising to me that transvestite men (and other men too, it seems) yearn for a flamboyance I, and most women I know, are not interested in.

I do like nice fabrics, though.