Personal preference

It could be that female designers have a particular privilege: they are allowed to use their own bodies as a field of research. A sleeve becomes a study of movement, a fold a study of the body, a coat a study of protection. What could just as well have been a personal preference acquires, through sufficient attention, the character of a method.

Perhaps the designer simply thought the sleeve was more beautiful when it was larger. That is an uncomfortable possibility, because where does research end and taste begin? A designer can spend years looking, fitting, drawing and changing, and in the end be able to say little more than: this is how it had to be. Good taste seems to possess the peculiar ability to make an entirely personal preference appear necessary in retrospect. Bad taste reveals its arbitrariness.

Perhaps the men's suit is a good example of what happens when that arbitrariness disappears entirely from view. It has established itself so successfully as a system that it is hardly perceived anymore as a subjective choice. It speaks of function, occasion, profession and rank and can therefore pretend to say nothing about the body. The man in a dark suit can disappear into the category of man. The woman is much less easily allowed to disappear. Her clothing interprets her body and is subsequently interpreted as a statement about herself.

This is why it is interesting when a woman adopts the male uniform. She adopts not only a pair of trousers, a shirt or a suit, but also the claim to neutrality attached to it. Except that this neutrality does not work for her. A man in a tuxedo can become invisible; a woman in a tuxedo immediately becomes specific. What was intended to neutralise subjectivity makes her all the more visible.

Perhaps neutrality, in the end, is also just taste that has endured long enough.

Tastelessness does not necessarily arise when someone possesses too much subjectivity, but when the effort to make that subjectivity particular becomes visible. We see what the garment wants to say. We see the sensuality, the reference, the concept, the designer trying to convince us.

A good garment does not need to explain its research. It may even be that the designer has no idea what she is doing. That is probably also why she continues to design. The garment is not made to prove a thought, but to discover whether, behind a personal preference, there might be something that is no longer merely personal.

C.




Written as part of the development of "Tuxedo Shirt" and "Tuxedo Dress".