Why Are Male Models in Lingerie Revolutionary?
New Zealand’s most irreverent online magazine Stuff.co.nz has published “You want me to wear what?,” a round-up of the most bizarre and, er, high-exposure men’s fashion on the runways across the globe:
At Berlin Fashion Week German designer Tom Rebl went for bondage, sending out a model in a leather shoulder harness and nothing else. The model used his gloved hands to hide his package.
The fetish theme continued at London Fashion Week where Jaiden rVa James presented a collection that was frighteningly fierce and S&M; and New Power Studio put lipstick and silly hats on its models, including a drum. …
At Air New Zealand Fashion Week in September last year Kate Sylvester sent male models down the runway wearing women’s lingerie slips, and boxer shorts trimmed with lace for the presentation of her men’s and women’s 2010 winter collection Diamond Dogs. The collection was inspired by infamous Auckland socialite of the 1980s Judith Baragwanath who had a penchant for wearing menswear and black lipstick.
“We were pillaging our menswear and putting it on the girls and thought what about the poor old boys, and decided to do a complete swap,” Sylvester says. “We had very boysy boys – it was important that they still looked very masculine in their slips. The models were incredibly gracious about it and wore them in very good spirit.”
Call us callous but of course the models were gracious about it — why shouldn’t they be? For decades, women models have appeared on the catwalk decked out in everything from menswear to mere scraps of fabric. And anyone who’s seen the movie Prêt-à-Porter recalls the infamous Warhol-esque finale, with a bevy of models walking the runway completely naked.
Female models have endured such fashions with nary a complaint since the dawn of Fashion Week. I don’t know that we need to applaud their male counterparts for suffering such tame indignities.
Pictured above: A male model walks during Kate Sylvester’s Fall/Winter 2010 show at Auckland New Zealand Fashion Week.

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In celebration of Fall Fashion Week, Turner Classic Movies asked legendary designers Todd Oldham and Manolo Blahnik to name ![[flourish]](http://ethicalstyle.com/wp-content/themes/es/images/botFlourish.png)
