MASCULINITIES: Thoughts and Reflections

43 Ervin Latimer

The Ill-fitting uniform I’ve always perceived masculinity as a school uniform that myself and all the other boys and male assumed children were forced to wear. An ill-fitting, sultry and rather unflattering ensemble that I continuously had trouble putting on.

It is, therefore, fair to say, that from a young age, I’ve had issues connecting with most of the other boys and men. I preferred talkative, kinder and more empathic company and it just so happened that these people were usually girls and women. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that I am a homosexual – I’ve met many a gay who are monstrous ghouls, incapable of any softer connection, consumed by their own projected manhood, and vice versa. This disconnection with traditional masculinity does not see sexuality.

Coming to terms with myself, as to how I present myself and my masculinity, has been a long and complicated road.

As a teenager, I thought it was funny that I bought a girl’s t-shirt with a suggestive print on it that said, “My boyfriend is out of town”. Little did I know that it would be deemed girly and gay (these two were basically synonymous back in the ‘00s); not because of the words, but because the text was in pink. I thought it was masculine when, in sixth grade, my mother braided my hair in beautiful, immaculate cornrows. But instead I was called a girl, because apparently braids in any shape or form were deemed feminine. Don’t even get me started with what my ex said when I wanted to purchase high-heeled platform boots a couple of years ago.

Navigating this path of masculinity through appearance has become a central part of my work as a fashion designer. Tim Brown, the founder and CEO of the legendary design company IDEO, argues in his book Change by Design that humans rely on stories to put ideas into context and give them meaning. At the heart of any good story, he explains, is a central narrative about the way an idea satisfies a need in some powerful way. As a feminist creative in the 2020s, I cannot think of a better story in fashion than the progression of feminism by dismantling masculinity.

Simply dressing men in skirts and heels is an oversimplification of what I am aiming at here. Instead, I’m intrigued