‘They Hide with their Boots On’ is in the January 2020 issue of Artforum.
EVEN AS RIHANNA promotes the nonbinary clothing line Art School and the critique of heteronormativity goes increasingly mainstream, masculinity is still permitted to present itself as a default. Gender may be performative, but one of the two binary roles is often unscrutinized. The timely exhibition “Invisible Men” not only platformed masculinity as its theme, but also queried this hiddenness and exposed its paradoxes. Displaying more than 180 garments from the Westminster Menswear Archive and juxtaposing nonbranded creations with the work of Jean-Paul Gaultier, Liam Hodges, Junya Watanabe, and other designers, the show offered a concise overview of some 120 years of masculinity’s sartorial expressions. Curators Andrew Groves and Danielle Sprecher selected pieces that demonstrate the complex, recursive relationship between men’s fashion and utilitarian clothing, for instance… READ MORE HERE