Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashion. Show all posts

Friday, February 16, 2007

Paris Fashion : Corsets for Men !!??



PARIS (AFP) - After skirts, make-up and pantyhose for men, the corset, onetime symbol of women's oppression, might be the next big thing for fashion-conscious males.


Young Parisian corset maker Sylvain Nuffer began cutting, stitching and boning corsets for men four years ago and now sells 30-odd standard models a year at 500 to 600 euros (650 to 775 dollars) a shot, 40 percent more when made to measure.


"I felt frustrated by the lack of choice of clothing for men," he told AFP. "I made one for myself and they kind of multiplied."


Wearing jeans with a gray silk corset of his own making over a shirt and tie, Nuffer, who learnt the complex trade with his corsetiere mother, stands tall, waist nipped in, shoulders wide, back straight.


Corsets for men have a history, he said, worn by medieval horsemen to protect the spine, adopted by bikers today for the same reason.


But the real inspiration behind Nuffer's corset -- laced up the back with a clip-open busk at the front -- dates back to the heady days of the 1789 French Revolution.


Male followers of utopian philosopher and economist, Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, at the time adopted the corset precisely because it was impossible to lace up alone. Having to help each other with the ties symbolised the humanitarian helping-other ideals of the Saint-Simonien movement.


Critics derided Nuffer's early creations, however, saying a garment stiffened with a multitude of bones and stays would be uncomfortable.


Not so, said one adept, Laurent Renaud, who teaches at a fashion school and wears his everyday. "I wear it over a shirt or under a sweater," he said. "I use it as daywear or to go out at night."


"The problem," he added, "is you get so used to it keeping you straight that it gets difficult to go without."


Hubert Barrere, the designer who created the corset for Madonna's wedding dress in 2000, said in interview that "corsets for men are a bit like upgraded waistcoats."


Military dress uniforms continued to be ribbed in the 20th century, said Barrere, a master corset maker who works with likes of Dolce and Gabbana and Stella McCartney while turning out made-to-measure personal numbers for Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Isabelle Adjani.


"I'm not over-enthused about corsets for men," he added. "I prefer a woman's body, I feel better highlighting a woman's curves."


Pulling from a box a gold python corset made for Alexander McQueen and worn by Naomi Campbell, Barrere waxes lyrical on what a corset can do for a woman.


"A woman who wears a corset offers herself to men differently, she is attractive," he said. "Corsets constrain the body, either to protect or to display, and the richer and more powerful you are, the readier you are to wear clothing that constrains."


Barrere, whose bespoke corsets cost over 2,000 euros a piece, uses spring or spiral steel rather than plastic to "change a silhouette, highlight feminine shapes, modify volumes."


"I want corsets to be comfortable, delirious but comfortable."


Whether as underwear or outerwear, the corset has seen difficult times.

Worn to gird and shape the torso, 16th-century models were so stiff women could not sit down. At mealtimes, wearers had to remove the wooden busk, or shaft, inserted at the front and lay it at the table by the cutlery. It was a breach of etiquette for a man to handle the busk.

In the 19th century, when waists were supposed to be no bigger than twice the circumference of the neck, there was an outcry over the harm of tight lacing to health and corsets fell out of favour as an instrument of women's oppression.

They were gradually replaced, as underwear, by girdles and elastic bras while the corset, worn outside the clothing, was marginalised as an accounterment in the dusky subcultures of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism.

In the 1970s the garment came out of the closet, staging a comeback on the catwalks in a collection by Britain's Vivienne Westwood inspired by historical garments.

She was followed a decade later by Thierry Mugler and Jean-Paul Gaultier, the designer who created Madonna's famed pointy corset bra for her 1990 World Tour and then turned the shape into an iconic perfume bottle.

For Barrere, the corset story has come full circle.

"Corsets were long a wound for women," he said. "But today if a woman decides to wear a corset it is a sign of empowerment, not of submission."



Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Sex vs Clothes: What do Women Want?



NEW YORK - For most women, the choice between sex and a new wardrobe is simple -- they go for the clothes.


Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities.


Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.


"Some people say clothes make the man, but the right clothes can even replace him," fashion designer, stylist and TV personality Carson Kressley from the reality TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" said in a statement accompanying the poll.



The study also suggested that clothes often wear better than relationships.


The average woman between 18 and 54 years of age has hung on to her favorite article of clothing for 12 and a half years, a year longer than she's held on to her longest relationship.


Almost three-quarters of respondents, or 70 percent, also said they believed in love at first sight when it came to finding the perfect article of clothing, while only 54 percent of women were as confident in spotting the right man.


Nearly half of the women, or 48 percent, taking part in the survey by consumer products giant Unilever said their favorite article of clothing was more reliable than their man in giving them confidence and making them feel sexy.



Wednesday, January 24, 2007

It’s a bra! It’s an eyepatch! It’s a bra! It’s an eyepatch!

Every so often, the fashion world turns very practical.

tuesdayfashion.jpgWith this “creation” unveiled in Paris this week, women have all kinds of flexibility.

They have a bra, a blindfold, an eyepatch, a toga… Probably even a Wonder Woman outfit, if they fold it the right way. What other designer lets you go from pirate to super-hero without even packing an overnight bag?

A model presents a creation by French designer Adeline Andre as part of her Spring-Summer 2007 Haute Couture fashion collection in Paris.

















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