ABSTRACT

The perception of fashion as an apolitical phenomenon has always been a partial misperception, as fashion and appearance have always played a key part in the politics of difference. The politics of difference here refers to those politics which affect, reinforce or even invent difference within groups and societies whether according to class, age, gender, race, sexual orientation or, more simply, the politics of bodily regulation. The impact of hippie culture on fashion was, as a consequence, immense. Jeans, cheesecloth, velvets, beads, bangles and lengthening hair ultimately, if briefly, became the uniform of almost the entire population under forty. If feminism provided a powerful critique of femininity and fashion for women, then it was up to gay men as ‘outsider men’ to provide a similar set of insights into masculinity and fashion for men. These insights were distinctly mixed and heavily derived from the historical position of male homosexuality.