One corner of “The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Maculine Dress,” an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. From left, a peacock costume worn at a Mummer’s New Year’s Parade in Philadelphia around 1993, an Uncle Sam costume from early in the 20th century and a “Tom Fool” clown costume worn at a festival in England in 1829. Ever since about 1800, when men’s fashion turned toward the austere, extravagant male clothing got mostly consigned to special extravagant occasions.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
A man’s dress coat from France, from around 1790, in silk hand-embroidered with tulips. Unlike today, when power dressing runs to gray flannel, men in the later 18th-century could look distinguished and exuberant at the same time. What better demonstrates malepower than the ability to command all the man-hours that went into making agarment like this?
Philadelphia Museum of Art
This purple-silk waistcoat (pronounced “weskit”), embroidered with grapevines, would have been worn in the United States sometime in the second quarter of the 19th century. By then, men had started to dress in sober blacks and grays, but there was still room left for self-expression in the vests they wore beneath their suits.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
A knit top and body suit from the 2010/2011 collection of German designer Bernhard Willhelm. Where all men once could have worn extravagant clothes, today only men well out of the mainstream can get away with it.
In 2008, American designer Thom Browne took a suit in gray and black – the colors of establishment males – and pulled them to the cutting edge by using them in Argyle plaid, usually reserved for socks, and “protecting” his suit with a clear-plastic rain cape.
A paper shirt made in Germany in the late 1960s. Over the last two centuries, flamboyant clothes have come to be seen as less that fully manly. The girl-positive writing on this shirt allowed a 1960s groovster to wear his paisleys and still assert his heterosexual bona fides.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
A coat worn by a liveried servant of the Austrian Prince von Metternich, sometime between 1813 and 1829. Like your household goods, the appearance of your servants needed to demonstrate your wealth and taste and panache. By 1825, a prince might be wearing sober black wool, but he dressed his servants in the flashier looks of years gone by.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
A man’s “bondage suit,” produced in about 1990 by British designer Vivienne Westwood. A strange mix of 1970s punk and traditional tailoring, but in a color guaranteed to make heads turn.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
An unknown Italian made these shoes in about 1973. For a brief few years in the late 1960s andearly ‘70s, relatively mainstream men (moviemakers, young professors) could afford to wear clothes than would now seem beyond outlandish.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
