The Great Masculine Renunciation and Men's Fashion History

Introduction: Fashion as Identity Expression

In his book Culture and Everyday Life, Andy Bennett provides a definition of fashion that highlights a particular utilitarian function wholly apart from that of clothing. Though a simple observation, this fact forces one to reconsider how men's fashion has been regarded for at least the last eighty years. Bennett writes that "fashion provides one of the most ready means through which individuals can make expressive visual statements about their identities" — a claim most people would readily agree with (Bennett 2005, p. 96). However, this claim has not been taken to its logical conclusion in the major academic texts regarding fashion, and particularly men's fashion, due to the erroneous belief that at some point in the nineteenth century, men "renounced" fashion, deeming it feminine and thus outside the sphere of male activity.

In reality, the so-called "Great Masculine Renunciation" was not a renunciation of the practice of fashion, but rather a renunciation of the acknowledgment of that practice by men. In other words, while the nineteenth century did see dramatic changes in the roles of men and women in society — including changes in dress — men never ceased to use fashion as a "means through which [they could] make expressive visual statements about their identities," even as they began to claim the opposite. In order to understand why this was the case, and why this fact has been overlooked by a number of critics, it is necessary to investigate the history of men's fashion beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through to the present day.

Flugel's Great Masculine Renunciation

One of the most important academic texts regarding fashion appeared in 1930, when John Carl Flugel wrote The Psychology of Clothes. In a central portion of the book, he discusses a historical shift which he dubs "the Great Masculine Renunciation," in which "man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful," such that "he henceforth aimed at being only useful," and thus "so far as clothes remained of importance to him, his utmost endeavors could only lie in the direction of being 'correctly' attired, not of being elegantly or elaborately attired" (Flugel 1930, p. 111). Taken simply as an argument that "man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful" during the nineteenth century, Flugel's thesis might be considered sound, because for the most part, the nineteenth century did see men and women segregated into their respective "spheres." This was largely due to the popularity of the cult of domesticity in women's magazines and religious texts on the one hand, and the need to assert individual masculine power in the face of the Industrial Revolution on the other. Women were expected to be docile, subservient, and sexually attractive, while men were required to conform to standardized roles in the workplace.

However, recognizing the changing roles of men and women is not where Flugel's claim ends. Instead, he suggests that this division of activity into gendered spheres meant that men essentially abstained from fashion over the course of the nineteenth century. This notion has permeated the academic response to men's fashion, such that "modern men's fashions have been largely neglected; such attention as they have received is generally limited to questions of utility, omitting the nuances of male dress" (Entwistle 2000, p. 172). In reality, men did not abstain from fashion, but rather claimed to abstain from fashion while generating a distinct set of standards that served to convey particular meanings about class, sexual prowess, and social standing. It is almost stunning to consider the widespread recitation of Flugel's claims regarding the Great Masculine Renunciation when one considers the vast amount of evidence to the contrary, because even a cursory examination of what constituted being "correctly attired" in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals a whole host of embedded meanings and expressive visual statements.

Men's Fashion as Coded Expression

This is most obvious when one considers that "the main example of utility menswear, namely the suit, is as much a symbol of masculine sexuality in terms of broadening the shoulders and chest and connecting larynx to crotch through collar and tie, as it is a practical (if historically uncomfortable) uniform of respectability" (Edwards 1997, p. 3, in Entwistle 2000, pp. 172–173). Thus, the nineteenth-century man wearing a "utilitarian" suit is engaging in a fashionable display just as much as the domestic woman, with the only difference being the particular meaning displayed. Flugel and others like him err by assuming that the only point of fashion is to be beautiful, or elegant, or elaborate. These are merely some of the possible meanings which can be created by clothing, but by no means is this list exhaustive. In addition to beauty, clothes can make one appear weak, powerful, domineering, sexually potent, or any number of other possibilities. The Great Masculine Renunciation, then, was not a renunciation of fashion, but rather a subtle codification of the range of acceptable meanings expressible through men's clothing — just as the cult of domesticity represented the range of acceptable personalities and behaviors for women.

When attempting to analyze men's fashion, one must therefore be careful to recognize that for much of the last two centuries, men's fashion has been a kind of unspoken trade, wherein the expressive potential of clothing is recognized but carefully discussed so as not to be confused with the kind of "fashion" engaged in by women, which was considered frivolous. This "rigorous attention to structures of self-denial and social distinction" can be seen in the discourse surrounding men's fashion at the time, which "incorporate[d] a gendered appreciation of the qualities of tailoring; echoing those areas of leisured cultural activity such as collecting, prioritized for men in the guise of connoisseurship while being demoted for women to the realm of the domestic chore or the trivial hobby" (Breward 1999, p. 60). For example, a catalog for menswear from 1912 states that "the necessity of having one's lounge suits well cut is obvious. The subtle details which elevate the expert cutter to a plane above the lesser lights of his profession are never more pronounced than in this important garment" (Breward 1999, p. 60). Here, the "utilitarian" suit is identified as a site of meaningful expression, because the quality of one's tailoring is an outward sign of expertise, experience, and competence. Thus, the quality of the suit represents the quality of the man — at precisely the time that, according to Flugel's thesis, men had supposedly abandoned fashion in favor of strictly utilitarian clothes.

Conclusion: Fashion, Power, and Hegemony

Fashion, as a concept distinct from clothing, has always had a utilitarian purpose, but this purpose has been mischaracterized and hidden by those who might benefit from denying that it exists. In particular, the so-called Great Masculine Renunciation of the nineteenth century served to conceal the fact that men's fashion existed as a means of expressing meaning in precisely the same way as women's fashion. This reality has been misrepresented in much academic scholarship due to the fact that fashion was interpreted only as the expression of beauty or extravagance, rather than as any meaningful expression through clothing. Examining the history of men's fashion from the nineteenth century through to the twenty-first reveals how menswear served to convey power, expertise, sexual prowess, and male hegemony.

This history allows one to appreciate not only how the discourse surrounding men's fashion has changed over the last two centuries, but also how this discourse represents a single instance of a larger phenomenon: the ways in which dominant groups attempt to shield and perpetuate their power by naturalizing the very systems through which that power is exercised.

References

Barker, C. (2008). Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. SAGE, New York.

Bennett, A. (2005). Culture and Everyday Life. SAGE, New York.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Routledge, New York.

Bourke, J. (1996). "The Great Male Renunciation: Men's Dress Reform in Inter-War Britain." Journal of Design History, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 23–33.

Breward, C. (1999). "Renouncing Consumption: Men, Fashion and Luxury, 1870–1914." In De La Haye, A. & Wilson, E. Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 59–60.

Entwistle, J. (2000). The Fashioned Body. Blackwell Publishers, Malden.

Flugel, J. (1930). The Psychology of Clothes. AMS Press, New York.