There’s an interesting dialectic, in men’s fashion magazines like "T," between pushing the butch button and the femme button. Not only are they, in certain respects, inescapably femme — all about decoration and performativity, evanescence and prettiness — they’re also, I have to think, published for women as much as, or more than, they are for men. Thus the many androgynous models, who are wearing men’s clothes but whose delicate physiques and perfectly tailored outfits can serve as an implicit advertisement for the clothing label’s women’s wear. The magazines are also, obviously, published with an eye to gay male readers, who if not necessarily femme themselves are certainly more comfortable than their straight counterparts with a blurring of the boundaries between masculine and feminine.
And yet many of these magazines still are for created with the straight male non-metrosexual in mind. Thus you have, as I mentioned yesterday, ads with Winston Churchil shilling for a wristwatch, and ads for hopelessly straight labels like Perry Ellis (man leaning against a sea-bleached fence on a sand dune with a cableknit turtleneck sweater), Rainforest (man on an outcropping of rocks in an earthtoned down jacket), Van Heusen (man in a boring suit), and Arnold Brant (man in a fine turtleneck sweater and earthtoned camelhair sportscoat (what is it with the turtleneck sweaters, anyway?)).
You also have this bit, from a profile of Dior chief executive Sidney Toledano:
The waiter at L’Ami Louis uncorked the [Chateau Latour] wine, and, as plates of escargots began to arrive, the actor Gerard Depardieu entered and took a seat behind Toledano, so that the two men were shoulder to shoulder. Depardieu is built like a house, and his white shirt barely hid his belly. Toledano had the waiter pour the actor a glass of the Latour. As Depardieu buried his nose in the glass and inhaled deeply, Toledano watched him, his arms folded across his chest. Depardieu took a swig and, in a tone that bordered on stinginess, said he thought that it smelled better than it tasted. Toledano regarded him placidly and pointed to the label. Depardieu smiled sheepishly.
One of the qualities that soon becomes apparent about Toledano is how completely at ease he is in his own skin. He is not the least bit arrogant, but, at the same time, very little impresses him.
This a fantasy of full-bodied masculine virility. Debonair Moroccan-French-Jewish fashion executive who, as we learn early in the profile, has "hooded eyes that glow with intimate interest, and a full head of silvery hair." Without even having to think about it (because, we presume, he’s done it so many times before) he has the waiter pour the man-of-great-appetites Depardieu a glass of his expensive wine, and then, graciously but forcefully outdoes Depardieu in a contest of taste and discrimination.
But for the fact that Toledano does, in fact, exist, he might as well be a character in a whiskey commercial (he sounds quite a bit, in fact, like the Dos Equis mascot, "the most interesting man in the world").
It’s no great insight to point out in this context Toledano is, in fact, a character in an advertising campaign — not for his own label, though of course they get some runoff, but for that purpose for which the entire magazine exists, the profits of the fashion-clothing-apparel industry. He’s there to allow the skittish straight male consumer, who’s afraid that too great an interest in clothes will betray some hidden womanly aspect, to buy without embarrassment. Toledano, in all his silver-haired CEO splendor, creates a conduit between the insecure male ego and the consuming of expensive clothes.
