The Victoria and Albert Museum was established in 1852. Their primary attraction is design: architecture, fashion, etc. According to the website, their "founding principle was to make works of art available to all, to educate working people and to inspire British designers and manufacturers" (vam.ac.uk).
When we first got to the museum, Camila, Erin and I all headed straight to the fashion exhibit. Something that immediately caught my eye was the section on modern fashion (I've never really been one for history), and in particular this black jumpsuit covered in sequins.
The masculine features and tuxedo-like look of the piece made me think of the two leading women in the Shakespeare shows we saw at the Globe Theatre. Portia from Merchant of Venice and Rosalind from As You Like It both cross-dressed in order to get what they want. More-so in Portia's case than Rosalind's, it allowed her to be taken more seriously and achieve something she wouldn't have been able to if she was dressed as a woman.
Women's fashion has always had masculine influences, and that's because masculinity is associated with power. Unfortunately, women are perceived as more authoritative when wearing suits, structured blazers, or inspired pieces like the one above (minus the sequins), rather than feminine dresses. This connects back with Shakespeare's shows and the amount of cross dressing women had to do to get shit done. Not to say Shakespeare didn't have a number of strong female characters, but, for the most part, in order to establish control or dominance, they had to dress like men.
Unfortunately, we still see the stereotypes and gender roles at play today, as there's an abundance of men-inspired women's clothes, but you'll hardly see largely feminine inspired men's clothes.
Somehow this blog post turned into a post about feminism. Not mad about it though.
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