“It’s a gay world, after all…” might not qualify as an official industry theme song, but when it comes to openness, fashion designers have broken down the closet door.
At the end of this season’s Viktor & Rolf show in Paris—a rollicking mix of ballroom dancing, kitsch and beautiful clothes—the lights dimmed, fog rolled in and out strode eight tuxedoed men, who formed same-sex couples and began waltzing.
That the most controversial aspect of this impromptu plug for the Dutch duo’s new men’s fragrance, Antidote, was a projection of the advertising image—not the light-in-the-loafers dance floor display—said a lot about where fashion is at these days. Overt product promotions at fashion shows still might be derided as cheesy—in this case, an ad showing a man’s face engulfed in vapors from the bottle—but gay imagery barely registers.
With Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Kors camping it up on prime time and swarthy men locking lips in Marc Jacobs ads, it’s hard to imagine a time when fashion, a gay-friendly industry if there ever was one, might have been in the closet. “Between Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the word ‘metrosexual’ and straight men being into fashion, there’s never been so many lines that have been crossed,” Jacobs says. In fact, he finds it shocking that “it still makes news when some kid in a band says he’s gay or straight,” alluding to the recent outing of Lance Bass from ‘Nsync.
To be sure, gay marriage—a pivotal, hot-button topic during the last American presidential election—had been a dead issue until late October when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights as straight couples. That ruling motivated conservatives to inflame their base once again, just prior to the November elections.
The rights issue will likely continue to fade in and out as a political tool. And while it may be a media sport to speculate on whether certain celebrities are gay, it seems almost unthinkable that such fascination could still extend to fashion. In that enclave, the opposite game is more likely to play out, where even hard-core conservatives expect their fashion designers to be gay.
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“I think if I were a straight man who wanted to be a dress designer, I’d pretend to be gay,” says David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group. “Today, it’s a big plus to be gay. I think [it’s] what’s expected of a fashion designer. It’s kind of a cool and sexy plus. It’s a fact of life.”
But it wasn’t so long ago when the fashion industry was still quite closeted.
In 1971, when WWD asked late designer Bill Blass if he had preferences in sex—boys or girls–he replied tersely: “What kind of a question is that in this day and age? What is that supposed to mean, ‘boys or girls’? Because I’m 49 years old, am I suspect? I was once engaged to marry,” he said, “but I can’t remember her name.”
“In the old days, the Bill Blasses of the world were [hesitant] to flaunt their sexuality because their clients or husbands would not take them seriously or invest in their company and instead think that they were effeminate or ephemeral,” notes Simon Doonan, creative director at Barneys New York. “There’s no Rip Taylor or Liberace in fashion. You are more likely to have a Tom Ford or a Zac Posen. They are honest but don’t flaunt it, because they want to be taken seriously and as fiscally responsible.”
Among the pioneers were Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, major figures in international fashion since the Sixties who were widely known to be a couple. In fact, today Bergé is even owner and publisher of a gay magazine, Tetu, where he’s listed at the top of the masthead.
“For Yves and me it was never an issue. People didn’t care. It wasn’t scandalous for anyone,” Bergé relates in an interview. “It’s much more difficult when you work in a factory. For example. I’m touched when people tell me or Yves that we helped them with their homosexuality by being open about ours.” Bergé notes, “In the early part of the century, most of the grand houses—Jean Patou, Molyneux, Lucien Lelong, Marcel Rochas—were more entrepreneurs than designers. They weren’t homosexual, and most of the business people in the world of fashion aren’t. But on the creative side, it’s always been a homosexual’s trade. I don’t know that it’s necessary to be homosexual to be a designer, but one could ask the question.
“It wasn’t something people wanted in the open,” he continues. “In the best of cases, it was admitted and known, but it was never something anyone boasted about.”
Pierre Cardin agrees, saying the subject was taboo when he was growing up. “Everyone knew who was gay and who wasn’t, of course, but no one talked about it openly,” he says. “During the German occupation, I remember this bar, I think it was called Josephine, and all the guys went there. But it felt very dangerous. After the war, Jean Cocteau opened a lot of doors because he lived openly with Jean Marais. All of a sudden there were 800 boys whooping it up at Maxim’s. In fashion, of course, we were everywhere. But we still didn’t talk about it. It was like with every English aristocratic family: There was always one gay son, but nobody wanted to talk about it.”
According to many observers, a watershed moment for fashion’s emergence from the closet was the outbreak of AIDS and a rash of AIDS-related deaths in the Eighties. While enrobed in tragedy, the disease brought awareness of gay culture to the masses. “There was no hiding the fact that Perry Ellis and Halston were gay anymore,” recalls Wolfe. “That awareness may have also cast a sympathetic light. I think even though he wasn’t associated with fashion, Rock Hudson changed everything. It became very antisocial to be antigay and anti-AIDS [research].”
Still, the AIDS epidemic not only claimed many great talents, it also spooked the industry and stereotyped fashion designers as high-risk investments, prone to sexual promiscuity and drug abuse.
In 1983, Calvin Klein took the unusual step of having his doctor declare in a front-page story in WWD that “there is no evidence that [Klein] is suffering from AIDS or any other serious disease.”
A barrage of rumors about the designer’s health had prompted calls from bankers to Klein’s business partner, Barry Schwartz, wanting to know “the truth.” “I’m in great health,” Klein retorted. “I don’t even take vitamins.”
In the wake of AIDS, it was difficult for designers seeking financing for their businesses. For example, the late Bill Robinson, who was named men’s wear designer of the year in 1989 by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, had an extremely difficult time getting funding in his post-Bidermann career. Robinson died in 1993.
By that time, however, fashion was openly gay on the runways, especially in men’s wear. In 1995, Jean Paul Gaultier, who had been putting men in skirts for a decade, unleashed a pack of lion-tressed, riding crop–carrying, Glamarama boy toys, letting the drag queen “Lola” announce each one from stable stalls of the Cirque d’Hiver. In 1996, John Bartlett was staging a full-on Fire Island sex-stravaganaza on a New York runway, complete with oiled-up muscle boys.
Mizrahi relates an incident in the late Eighties when New York magazine did a cover story on him and his work just as he was bursting onto the scene. “I remember a publicist, who shall remain nameless, saying to me, ‘Oh darling, I am so sorry for you. Of course, now everyone knows you’re gay,'” Mizrahi recalls. “And I thought, Excuse me, they didn’t know I was before? It was such a funny way of thinking then. I thought it’s so great everyone knows I am gay. It was kind of funny and chic then. The worst thing to do is to make an issue of it or deny it, because that’s who I am, as a personality or designer,” he adds. “I could never keep that secret. It would never occur to me to keep that secret. That was my generation.”
Doneger’s Wolfe says most people today are on that wavelength. “I don’t know anybody of the current generation of fashion designers who is gay and pretending not to be. There doesn’t seem to be a point,” he says. “The fashion consumer has become so sophisticated that they understand that being gay is actually a plus, because gay people can have a sensitivity to style and color and design that many straight men don’t. Let’s be honest about it.”
Jacobs contends that sexuality has become a moot in other industries, as well. “I don’t think the sexuality of a designer, a chef, an interior designer or a doctor is an issue for any contemporary-thinking person,” he says. “If someone had a problem with me being gay, I doubt they’re buying my clothes. I don’t think politics has ever affected a woman who wants to buy a dress.”
The fall men’s wear campaign for Jacobs’ signature collection, which includes an image of two burly men kissing on a bearskin rug, could be seen as emblematic of a new openness around gay subjects, particularly in America. But Jacobs insists it “wasn’t any kind of statement. We weren’t demonstrating anything other than Dick Page, who I work with, and his husband. To us, it was a picture about a happy couple,” he says. “No one I know found them to be anything other than beautiful ads, like they would say about the ones with Jennifer Jason Leigh.”
Bill Blass designer Michael Vollbracht agrees about broader acceptance of the gay lifestyle. “Today, gay men don’t have to be fashion designers. They can be bankers, Wall Street tycoons, they can be David Geffen,” he says. “Being gay is almost a ‘so what?’ now. On television, you have Will & Grace, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell, and all these flamers are running around telling America how to dress. I know children who love Queer Eye.”
Butt magazine, whose debut issue in 2001 featured a scantily dressed Bernhard Willhelm on the cover and full monty photos of him inside, is another symbol of how openly the fashion industry now treats sexuality. Gert Jonkers, a Dutch fashion journalist and co-editor/publisher of the gay quarterly, relates that a common pastime among his colleagues during fashion week is to try and name five straight fashion designers. “It’s not easy,” he says. “You can do five maybe, but 10 is harder.”
The trendy Paris boutique Colette was among the first sales outlets for Butt, and today it sells about 80 copies of each issue, plus titles such as Girls Like Us, geared to lesbians. Among Butt’s early avid readers was Tom Ford, who began placing Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent ads in 2002. “It’s simply a generational shift,” says Ford. “Because for someone like me ,who was never in the closet and who grew up in New York, being gay was never an issue. Actually, in the Seventies, it wasn’t viewed as a stigma but as something chic, to the point that even straight men pretended they were gay. I never lied about being gay, though older men grew up with more taboos. Richard [Buckley, Ford’s long-term partner], for instance, still flips out if I try to kiss him on the street.
“I think the world is in general much more open,” Ford continues, “and really doesn’t care whether one is gay or not, the only exception coming from actors. The gay ones tend to hide it because they think they won’t get as many straight roles anymore, so they would have less work. I hate the classification gay-straight, and I really don’t think that even 18-year-old kids care anymore. It’s not that people expect designers to be gay, but I think it can be convenient because women prefer gay designers. In general, there’s the perception that gay men have a better sense of aesthetics. That’s a fallacy, because I have lots of badly dressed gay friends and know lots of well-dressed straight men.”
As for the various religious fundamentalist movements, “people living in such liberal enclaves as New York or L.A. don’t really give it a thought,” Ford points out.
Those fundamentalists would be very unlikely readers of Butt, where designers have expressed themselves in more ways than one. Jeremy Scott has posed nude for Butt, and designers including Helmut Lang, Viktor Horsting, Rolf Snoeren and Jacobs have granted interviews in which sexual proclivities are often openly discussed. Lang, for example, told Butt in its current fall issue that his idea of happiness is “walking barefoot and having found a hunky soul mate who completes me.” And, in the spirit of full disclosure, Lang also boasted he has no need to redesign his genitals.
“I can’t think of a more liberated or easygoing field than fashion,” says Jonkers. “Of course, the funny thing is, we’ve never shown any fashion in Butt. It’s good to see someone in underwear, but I don’t need to know if it’s Roberto Cavalli underwear or Dolce & Gabbana.”
Designers and other observers stress that being gay, or straight, for that matter, has little bearing on the fashion business today. “Nobody pays attention if a designer is gay or not,” says Jean-Jacques Picart, a Paris-based industry consultant. “There are also lots of heterosexual people, and I’ve never seen any clash because of sexuality. Someone who is homophobic could not work in fashion. It’s impossible.”
“I do not know if the sexuality of a fashion designer interests people more than any other kind of professional,” muses Gaultier. As for his take on the current climate, Gaultier says: “I think it depends how you feel about yourself being gay. If you feel comfortable, it will be OK. If you do not, it’s better to hide. Sometimes reactions can be taken violently anywhere in the world.”
Designer Charles Nolan likes to tell the story that he works in a business where if he shows up for work in a dress, no one would care, as long as the company is making money. “To me, it’s such a nonissue. I don’t think of it as a negative or a positive. We live in a pretty sophisticated business,” he says. Years ago, many would presume male designers were gay, but that is no longer the case, he contends.
“Being gay gives you a creative edge into the world of women,” says designer Arnold Scaasi, noting Humphrey Carpenter’s biography about Benjamin Britten argued that the composer couldn’t have been as creative as he was had he not been gay. “Now there isn’t that stigma there was 40 years ago. The world has changed—hello?—you have gay marriages and gay couples adopting children.”
Scaasi says he doesn’t think a designer’s sexuality is something that is even considered by potential investors. “People back designers because they are talented and have the potential to be good business partners, not because of their sexual preference,” he says.
But some agree there is still plenty of progress to be made, since stereotyping persists and there are plenty of places in the world that are notoriously homophobic.
“A gay designer or actor generally does not come with his or her partner to a red-carpet event, for instance,” says Horsting and Snoeren in an e-mailed reply to questions. In their view, the stereotype of the effeminate fashion designer is a disturbing one, and widespread acceptance of gays, even in the bubble of fashion, is a distant goal. “Being gay is still a fundamentally complicating factor in our lives,” they wrote. “We live in a heterosexual world, and we are always a minority….That is a fragile position to be in. Minorities are easily stereotyped. To be a gay designer, therefore, feels often more like an oxymoron than a liberating statement. Let’s be honest: Being gay is still a huge taboo in the film world, the corporate world and the sports world. And if two men dancing at our show is still shocking, even in the fashion world, it says something about what is accepted and what is not.”
The designers cited a largely positive reaction to their show, but noted that some members of the fashion press are hardly enlightened. “One Italian journalist asked us the day after the show: ‘Is your message to the world that women are not necessary anymore?’ It is such an absurd question and so symbolic,” they wrote. “Our lives are dedicated to beauty, fashion and women—and three minutes of men dancing would make that obsolete?”
Many fashion companies now target the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender populations via advertising, charity outreach and events. The most recent Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index gave high scores to Nike, Gap, Levi Strauss & Co. and Nordstrom, among others, for engaging in appropriate and respectful advertising or for sponsoring community events or organizations. But a few received zero scores: L.L. Bean, J.C. Penney and The Men’s Wearhouse. Some observers note there are segments of the industry that are more gay-friendly than others.
“Designer customers tend to be a little bit more educated, sophisticated and open to the possibility of [designers having] a gay lifestyle,” says New York designer Carmen Marc Valvo. “In parts of Middle America, people don’t have the means or probably the education. Let’s just say if Jaclyn Smith was gay, I don’t think she’d be selling to Kmart.” Butt magazine’s Jonkers, having attended many streetwear and jeanswear events such as the Bread & Butter trade show, says, “I always find that world extremely straight.”
Still, many designers insist sexuality is a private matter and needn’t be broadcast, however accepting society has become. “It’s in bad taste,” says Karl Lagerfeld. “Outing is totally démodé. Except for the person you sleep with, who has to know what you do in bed? I hate ghettos,” he continues. “I like the mix of everyone. In fashion, where we live, it was never an issue. Being gay is like a hair color, so where is the subject?”
“I’m not for publicly airing one’s sexuality in public,” Bergé adds. “For instance, I think it’s gross, whether I’m homosexual or not, when Tom Ford talks in a magazine about watching a porno film and beating off. It doesn’t shock me. I’m not a puritan, it’s not that. It’s just gross.”
Also emblematic of lingering reticence about sexuality, many designers have declined an invitation to be featured in Butt, Jonkers says. Recently, the magazine asked a prominent Dutch couturier if it could publish a series of nude photos he did eons ago. “He was absolutely shocked by the idea, because he considers himself very chic,” Jonkers says.
Not that all designers feel the need to be politically correct. Asked if he thought the fashion industry should demonstrate sensitivity, given conservative religious views in many parts of the world, Jacobs replies: “I don’t think I should change my beliefs to accommodate someone who is backward. I keep an open mind.”
To be sure, heterosexual designers say they feel conspicuous in an out-and-proud industry. “Sometimes I have been discriminated against [for being heterosexual], but it’s understandable,” says designer Roberto Cavalli. “It’s happening less and less, and it would not happen at all if we all thought the same way I do. It would be simpler: Homosexuals are fantastic, wonderful people. Unfortunately, often there are people who spoil their image, people who should not appear in public and ridicule themselves.”
For his part, Doonan says he never understood why anyone in fashion ever felt the need to “butch it up….That just seems alarmingly silly, given the milieu. I thought Yves Saint Laurent was to be applauded and complimented for always being out. When you are talented like he is, it’s pointless. There’s no upside to pretending to be straight.”
Now that fashion is so firmly out of the closet, Mizrahi muses what the next step might be. “Frankly, a little mystery should return to the sexual subject,” he says. “Where does one go after one comes out? I am a little bored of gay. There’s no turning back for me, I won’t start wearing flannel shirts and whatever it is that those straight people wear, but at the same time, I wish there was a little mystery to it.”
—With contributions from Alessandra Ilari, Milan; Robert Murphy, Paris, and Marc Karimzadeh and Rosemary Feitelberg, New York