Lost in the Masquerade: ManStyle / Men + Fashion

The many debated interpretations of Hamlet's characteristics of a man resonate in the claim made by theorist David Halperin in the 1990s about the contested meaning of 'Queer' in gender, sexual and identity politics. 'There is nothing in particular to which it refers', he wrote. 'It is identity without an essence'. This indeterminacy over the impossible definition of Queer approximates to an extent the thesis of the collaborating curators who staged the impressive exhibition ManStyle, now showing at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). The Granny knit outfit (2009) from the Doilies and Pearls, oysters and shells collection from Sydney's Romance Was Born (RWB), the brainchild of designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales who often collaborate with contemporary artists, is a case in point. Combining Aboriginal craft traditions and shell art by Bidjigal elder Esme Timbery, and hand-crocheted and contemporary print design, the outfit is according to the curators, 'a playful homage to family, elders and the underworld, and also proposes masculinity, or 'manstyle', to be an artfully constructed masquerade'. Their playful positioning of masculinity, here, as a continuous masquerade is the thesis of this subversive exhibition of male fashion, the first to focus on men and fashion in Australia