70s gay fashion

But when one particular look cropped up in the post-Stonewall gay scene of the s, it was so popular—and so distinct—that the guys who sported it were dismissed as “clones.” Inspired by. For a long time, it was popular to hate on s styles for men: big collars, high waists, and tight crotches had fallen out of fashion. The Gay Liberation Movement’s contributions instilled power within queer voices that would later inspire mainstream fashion’s rejection of gender divisions.

Striking work by Hal Fischer applies typologies to gay male street fashion. A series from overlays full-length portraits of various gay male “types” with tongue-in-cheek annotations. Though steeped in protest, the fashions and fads of this era were also frilly and decadent, luxuriant in materials and elaborate in construction — a sartorial mode that deftly underscores the.

Please visit My Account to verify and manage your account. An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link. Puzzled by a display of colored handkerchiefs, he asks a sales assistant what they are for. The yellow one: left side means you give golden shower; right side you receive.

gay fashion history

The hanky code discovered by this fictional officer was in a fact widely used in the US during the s by gay men looking for casual sex. Men with colored hankies in their jeans pockets could be spotted in numerous gay clubs and in the streets of major urban areas. Around that time, Hal Fischer , who had moved from Chicago to San Francisco to study photography and was getting involved in art criticism, was experiencing the vibrant gay community of the Castro and Haight-Ashbury districts.

Combining images with text and captions printed into the photographs, Fisher consciously employed semiotics the study of signs and symbols to deconstruct some of the codes used by the San Francisco gay community to find and select sexual partners:. Traditionally western societies have utilized signifiers for non-accessibility. The wedding ring, engagement ring, lavaliere, or pin are signifiers for non-availability which are always attached to women.

Signs for availability simply do not exist. In gay culture, the reverse is true. Signifiers exist for accessibility. The resulting series of photographs is often witty, with a subtle irony coming from the contrast between the erotically charged nature of the pictures and the clinical style of the captions, reminiscent of a medical book. The publication was successful and had a wide circulation back then, but once it went out of print, it became a rarity, until a second edition was released in Please note this video is NSFW.

In this series, the photographer identifies five basic archetypes, derived from the erotic imagery established in gay magazines, connecting them with specific elements of American culture. In particular, he mentions the 19th century idea of a virile individual in communion with nature that is expressed in literature by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain, and in figurative art by Thomas Eakins. Following a similar intention, some pictures illustrate the gay street fashion of men hanging out in Castro, revealing a great deal about gay subculture.

Adopting the rigorous documentary approach of the New Objectivity , the German photographer famously spent decades, from the early s to his death in , taking an exhaustive visual record of German people, from beggars to industrialists. Gay Semiotics never intended to be a complete catalogue of gay archetypes. It is, rather, a celebration of a delimited group of people acting in a particular time and space.

Fischer gave up photography in the early s and although he has been asked to revisit his project, he has refused. Documents are pertinent only if they relate to a defined experience. Yet, it is the nature of signs to shift in significance. The expanse of meaning always waits to be unfolded. Francesco Dama is a freelance art writer based in San Francisco, California.

He regularly writes for several print and online publications, and wastes most of his time on Instagram. More by Francesco Dama. Only Members may post a comment. If you already have a membership, then sign in.