“Gender Bending Fashion” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is the rare fashion exhibition that addresses a vital, of-the-moment cultural discussion while at the same time placing it within a historical framework. Gender and identity are subjects that are affecting government policies as well as fashion. And change is happening fast: It wasn’t that long ago that the murse (or man purse) transitioned from a sort of joked-about accessory to a serious revenue maker. Similarly, today the mention of men in skirts extends beyond the visual of David Beckham in a sarong and describes what’s happening on the ground. (Looking for proof? Check out our street style galleries.)

Defining identity on a spectrum rather than along binary lines is a paradigm shift that goes hand in hand with new modes of self presentation. Leading the way in the industry are designers like Virgil Abloh and Alessandro Michele whose designs resonate with the real pioneers of this sea change, the millennials and Gen Z kids who embrace fluidity. According to Michelle Finamore, Penny Vinik Curator of Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, it’s always been thus. “Historically, when you go back to other moments in time when there’s been gender-bending happening, it is in moments of youth-driven cultures—so the 1920s and 1960s and 1970s. Those are the key historical moments when people have been pushing against the status quo.”

The curator tried to look at fashion history through different perspectives, not just via a designer-focused lens and the result is a multilayered show that brings past and present together in innovative ways. A digital album, for example, introduces contemporary gender-bending Bostonians, while subcultures like Teddy Girls and Pachucas (zoot suit–wearing Mexican-American women of the 1940s), who have traditionally been outside of the conversation, are given space. “We really did try to get across that it’s stories and narratives that bring the objects to life,” says the curator. Finamore makes a point of introducing lesser-known boundary pushers like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (a pants-wearing Civil War surgeon who once said, “I don’t wear men’s clothes. I wear my clothes.”) among more familiar brands (Gucci, Comme des Garçons) and faces (Dietrich, Bowie). “One thing that we came across when we had these interviews and discussions,” observes the curator, “is that people really look to those icons in terms of how free they felt expressing their own style.” As the Thin White Duke sang, “We can be heroes.”

Here, a curatorial point of view on “Gender Bending Fashion.”


Why is gender-bending fashion gaining traction now?
Historically, when you go back to other moments in time when there’s been gender-bending happening, it is in moments of youth-driven cultures—so the 1920s and 1960s and 1970s. Those are the key historical moments when people have been pushing against the status quo. I feel like there is a lot more freedom of expression right now that is really driven by millennials and Gen Z. They’re finding their communities via social media and they have a platform to express themselves and be more comfortable with expressing themselves, no matter where they’re coming from. I think that has completely changed the game in terms of [them] feeling comfortable in their own skin and getting out there into the world.

Dandy Queens, Paris 2014
By Black Attitude duo Prisca Monnier and Catia Mota Da Cruz, blackattitudemagazine.com

Photo: Prisca M. Monnier / Courtesy of Prisca M. Monnier / Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Will self-expression take attention away from luxury and designer fashion?
I see it going both ways at this point in time. I think about someone like Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton and I think about Alessandro Michele of Gucci, for example; they are doing what Yves Saint Laurent was doing in the ’60s, which is really responding to what’s happening out there on the street, to what young people are wearing and what they’re into. Everyone keeps asking me: “Is fashion really trickling up from the street?” Those are hard questions to answer very generally, but I do feel like there’s much more of a synergy going on between high fashion and street fashion in recent years.

Walé Oyéjidé, Esq., with Samuel Hubler
Suit from the Born Between Borders collection, Spring/Summer 2014, designed for Ikiré Jones
Museum purchase with funds donated by the Fashion Council

Photo: Rog Walker for Ikiré Jones / Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Is this a politicized exhibition? Do you expect any pushback?
It’s not a comfortable subject for everybody, and yet I think if [the doubters] came in and saw the exhibition they’d realize [that while] there are aspects of it that might be perceived as radical, there are also these histories that everyone is aware of and they just haven’t thought about through the perspective of gender. Take, for example, Marlene Dietrich wearing [a smoking jacket] in Morocco. We explore a little more deeply what was going on at that time and why that was perceived as so groundbreaking when she wore it. To be perfectly honest, I think that the subject is approached in broad terms; the overarching goal is to present a fairly balanced presentation of what has happened historically, and I don’t think any of it is leaning in any particular dimension. I think that the history of the tuxedo and tails is not really that radical of a history.

Kenneth Paul Block
Yves Saint Laurent, Le Smoking, 1976
Opaque and transparent watercolor with black marker

Photo: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Today a woman in a suit doesn’t seem shocking, but a man in a skirt or a dress still excites comment.
I agree with you: It’s a very different phenomenon. I think when you look at gender-bending historically, you see what has really dominated that conversation is the suit. At some points in history it was considered more transgressive for a woman to wear pants or a suit in certain contexts, but it’s much more accepted now than seeing a man in a skirt.

David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World album cover, 1970

Photo: Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

What surprised you when working on the show?
There are very strong feelings and sentiments around doing an exhibition like this, which shouldn’t have been a complete surprise, because people feel very passionately about how they present themselves or how they view how others dress. I think it took a little bit of time for people to wrap their heads around it, but not for the younger generation. They’re living this, they’re in the conversation, they know the terminology. This idea of gender being on a spectrum is not something radical to this younger generation, whereas I think for an older generation it takes some time for them to digest. We did a number of roundtables with teenagers, college people, internal people, and gender studies folk, and what was really satisfying, as a fashion historian, is that the teenagers loved the historical aspect of it. They wanted to know more about these individuals and these stories of people who have pushed against the status quo. That’s also a real in for an older visitor, too, [who might] walk through and remember reading Dress for Success in the 1970s or 1980s. (I was reading it and thought, Wow, things have changed! It was really the bible of power dressing for women.) It was interesting to see the generational differences in the response, but also where they came together.

Young Thug wore this ensemble on the cover of his album Jeffrey (2016).
Alessandro Trincone, Annodami collection, Spring/Summer 2017
Modeled here by Andrea Antonelli.

Photo: Gioconda & August / Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

How did you translate the inclusivity of this movement, and tackle what you’ve referred to as “difficult histories,” into the show?
[I think it starts with] thinking about how fashion history has been approached and what lens we are viewing it through. A lot of times it’s been a designer-oriented history, and yet there are so many people who have fought against oppressive structures or societal rules who aren’t necessarily part of the standard history. So how do you bring that into play? [There are two ways we’ve done that:] One is we have a kind of visual chronological time line of fashion and gender outside of the gallery that brings in people like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker or the Teddy Girls of London, who are not as well known. You know, everyone talks about Chanel being the one to pioneer pants-wearing, but the story is much bigger than that. So [we wanted to] build those stories out. I also wanted to include the Latina Pachuca zoot suit wearer in the show, because those histories are not that well known, at least to a more general museum crowd. [The challenge was:] How do you incorporate that when you don’t actually have material culture representing it? Museums historically haven’t collected that material. To tell the story we purchased a vintage men’s gabardine suit from the ’40s and had it tailored to a woman’s form and presented it as a sort of exercise of interpretation.

What do you hope people will take away from the show?
I would hope visitors leave with a broader understanding of how this contemporary moment resonates with the past in terms of gender-bending style. What we’re experiencing now maybe perceived as quite revolutionary, and yet there are these precedents that I think have really informed the moment we’re in now. So I hope people leave with a broader perspective and really learn more about some of these designers, wearers, and figures in history who have really made a difference.

This interview has been edited and condensed.