Don’t start here! Start at the beginning!
I told you I’d do this a lot!
N and I have always loved watching what I call “craftsmanship” shows. You know, the ones where people go on TV and use their talents to make things. Blowing glass, carving wood, arranging flowers, applying makeup, throwing pottery, designing clothes, the list goes on. It probably started with cooking shows, but that’s such a broad category on its own that I tend to separate it. I don’t care about the competition that usually comes along with it, I just love watching people make things.
So it was that I started watching Project Runway. N had gotten invested pretty early on, and we would watch it together, but it never really made sense to me. I could respsect the work the designers were putting into their clothes, but when I saw the finished product, I was mostly just confused. For a lot of the designs, I didn’t understand who would want to wear such a thing. And for the ones I did like, I couldn’t imagine who would care enough about how they look to spend that much time or money on clothes. So for years, I watched dispassionately, mostly just trying to understand what I was even looking at and why it mattered.
After a while though, I had seen enough flattering designs that I started to recognize why people would care about fashion, even if I personally couldn’t fathom paying designer prices. I could start to see how a woman might put on one of those dresses and feel great about herself.
I know you already see it, but don’t get ahead of me!
As the seasons went on, and I continued learning about the process of fashion design, I also started paying more attention outside the show. We’d leaf through the gossip magazines after major events and look at the outfits people wore to the red carpet. Sometimes they were even designed by the people on Project Runway, building on their success and visibility from the show. But I started noticing a trend: women wore ever more extravagent outfits, while the men all wore minor variations of the same black tuxedo.
Some men wore brightly colored or patterned tuxedos, but the ones with skin color matching my own never seemed to get any more exciting than perhaps a pocket square. Maybe they’d swap a neckie for a bowtie, and occasionally they’d add a cumberbund, but that was all. Everything was so bland, and I realized I didn’t have any fashion icons to look up to.
Except that wasn’t quite true. I did have one person I’d always loved to see on the red carpets: Diane Keaton. Men wear suits and women wear dresses, yet here’s this beautiful woman absolutely rocking a suit. Every single time, she’d buck the trend and she’d look amazing doing it.
Taken all together, I got really upset that men were so restricted. Like, really upset. It stuck with me for years, every time I’d watch those beautiful women walk down the runway or the red carpet, I wished so badly that I had something I could wear that would be equally as stunning. Where is the men’s equivalent to women’s fashion?? Surely, that’s what I was looking for!
That’s right, we’re not even back to 2021 just yet. I don’t accept this kind of change easily.
All of this fashion talk came to a head on what I expected to be an average Monday morning. I didn’t really pay attention to events until after the fact, and sure enough, I was surprised to see N looking at the best- and worst-dressed lists from the Oscars the night before. We were scrolling through a bunch of looks I don’t remember, but one caught my eye and changed everything for me.
Billy Porter showed up in a gorgeous tuxedo-inspired gown designed by Christian Siriano. I had already known Siriano from his time on Project Runway, so I wasn’t surprised to see his name attached to a red carpet look, but I never expected this. Initially, I misunderstood what he was wearing. The top of the gown mimicked a traditional tuxedo, so much so that I thought it was in fact a tuxedo shirt and coat, accompanied by a giant skirt.
In any case, the message was clear: men need not be constrained by traditional expectations. And I felt like Porter and Siriano were speaking directly to me. They had heard my plea and had delivered a glimpse into a future where I could finally see myself being happy with my body. They were giving me permission to explore the world I had seen on television, the world I’d dreamed of taking part in, the world I was convinced had no place for me. Until now. Now I had a place.
Oh dear. I did not understand. At all.
Continue to part 3: the first step
