Ask Hadley: How Gay Is The Fashion Exactly?

Why are all male fashion designers gay?

David, by email

"...I'm always amazed at the popularity of this ridiculous canard. Honestly, am I the only one who eagerly snaffles down articles with headlines such as "Ralph and Ricky Lauren show us around their glamorous ranch!" or "Tommy and Dee Hilfiger invite us to their fabulous beach hideaway"? With perhaps the exception of "A day in the life of a supermodel", there is no genre of fashion article I love more than one in which a fashion designer shows off his lovely home, one he often shares with someone else, and, as often as not, that other person is someone of the opposite gender. Just off the top of my head, aside from Lauren and Hilfiger, Paul Smith, Rick Owens, Oscar de la Renta, Christian Lacroix and Yohji Yamamoto are all male fashion designers who do more for the ladies than design clothes for them (sorry – that looks a lot creepier written down than it sounded in my head). All male fashion designers, all straight.
But of course, fashion detractors with homophobic tendencies don't like these obvious examples because they don't corroborate their pet theory that fashion is a medium through which evil gay men humiliate women because they are jealous of their femaleness..."

Hadley Freeman demolishes ye olde canard with her usual wit, gusto and sensible thingness.
From the Ask Hadley fashion problem page in The Guardian.
Now read on...
The "Teh Gays in the fashion secretly hate women" tripe trope has been puked up this year by the awful Amanda Platell in the Mail, and intellectual heavyweights, Richard & Judy in the Express.
It's a big, fat line mad Julie Burchil has been tooting for years.
Did they really all think they were saying something original, insightful and true?

Fashion: Fascinating Fascism

"It has long been said that fashion is a con-trick by largely gay male designers to make women look more like men: breastless, hipless, as skinny as a boy. And in this respect, pre-pubescence is merely the next logical step. These clothes aren't meant to look good on you, they're meant to look good on Justin Bieber. (And even he would struggle in that Marc Jacobs dress.)"

Carole Cadwalladr, The Observer.
Codswallop, Carole.
It's only been said by The Daily Mail's second-most loopy columnist, Amanda Platell.
"Size zero turned out to be an apt term as the most feted designers, mostly brilliant gay men, effectively tried to squeeze women out of the fashion equation. And now they have..."
"It’s the ultimate in woman hating, to create a half-man, half-woman creature because the girls are simply not up to the job. They’re too, let’s face it boys, womanly, even when they’ve been starved to within an inch of their lives.
"What an act of abject misogyny."
What crap!
How ironic that Platell was taken up on this by Barbara Ellen;
"As for the accepted "fact" that "fashion is full of gay men who hate women"… this isn't a fact – it's snide, homophobic hogwash, offensive to the hordes of committed gay professionals in the fashion industry. If fashion has a problem (and, by Zoolander, it does), it's not covert hatred of the female, rather, it's overt worship of youth and the BMI that comes with youth. All this, and worse, could be said of fashion, but let's keep the gay-bashing out of it."
Ironic as Ellen was writing in The Observer and Carole Cadwalladr is her holiday stand-in.
Come back soon Miss Babs!

Update: The Guardian published a reply online a week later.

Galliarseholegate: With Friends Like These

Today's front page of The Guardian tests the limits of censorship by featuring a photograph of a giant prick.
"A man outside the Rodin museum in Paris disagrees with the departure of John Galliano, fired by Dior for alleged [sic] antisemitic remarks..."
Oh do fuck off.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Horrible Image For Fashion

Now I don't care about you, but me and the rest of the entire world have been waiting with bad breath to find out what Karl Lagerfeld has to say about John Galliarsehole's racist outburst.
Good news! M. Lagerfeld is quoted on WWD.com;
“I’m furious, if you want to know. I’m furious that it could happen, because the question is no longer even whether he really said it. The image has gone around the world. It’s a horrible image for fashion, because they think that every designer and everything in fashion is like this. This is what makes me crazy in that story..."
Thanks for clearing that up.
Fashion fact! Karl Lagerfeld is the only man in the world who dresses even worse than John Galliarsehole.

Fashion: Short Shrift

I bet when US fashion journalist, Brenner Thomas, wrote a jokey intro to a feature rhetorically asking "Is that old bromide about hemlines and the stock market true for men’s swimsuits too?", he didn't think anyone would take this dafter than daft idea seriously.
Well guess what?
UK fashion journalist Imogen Fox actually has!