[e-jBLOG] In Retrospect.

Personally, I hoard knitted vests. (Model: Rocco)

Retro is here and now. The refashioning of existing things – this is a trans theme. So yet again gentlemen, I find myself suggesting to you that fashion can be inextricably linked to our lives, a means of looking at ourselves closely in the mirror. Trans men the world over love a bit of retro. I’ve seen Amos photographed in some cracking old skool sunglasses. Rocco looks swelegant in a bowtie. Personally, I hoard knitted vests. Re-wearing old things in a cheeky new way is like reshaping our old bodies to fit our real identities. We can rock this shit.

Retro is playful, ironic and tongue-in-cheek because it is deliberately and humorously juxtaposed between romantic nostalgia and postmodern cynicism. Retro is popular and powerful because it innately blurs the boundaries between high and low art. ‘Retro’, according to Elizabeth Guffey, is a form of “Simulating history rather than making it.”

We re-write our own histories. (Model: Elliot)

The current use of retro is so widespread it is deemed a phenomenon – “an event that may be observed.” It is both a form of public history and a non-historical way of knowing the past. It is history-in-the-making, just as much as it is history re-made, because it appears in every day fashionable dress, all forms of new and old media and in mainstream and alternative cinema. It is a trend that stays in fashion simply by transcending through the decades. Just like tranny boys. We will always be what we were, but we are sporting ourselves more fittingly. We re-write our own histories.

The Chap.

So now, let us turn to the pages of The Chap, a journal for the modern gentleman. With special permission from Atters, founder and editor, I proffer The Chap’s Manifesto as guidance for any trans man living in the modern world who wishes to maintain timeless conduct. As much as I wish I had written this myself, recognising the efforts of one’s superiors is ultimately the manly thing to do. And also, I promised I’d introduce you to the work of the best dressers I know. So try this on for size:

The Chap Manifesto

1. THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances.

2. THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports.

3. THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

4. THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans. Wear fabrics appropriate to your age, and, who knows, you might even get a quick fumble in your box at the opera.

THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE'S HAT. (Model: Danny)

5. THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you – but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting, departing or simply saluting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin.

6. THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WESKIT (waistcoat). Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it.

7. THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s quite simple really. Instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?”

8. THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket.

9. THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street.

THOU SHALT ALWAYS CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. (Model: Jett)

10. THOU SHALT ALWAYS CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, not beards.

Again, according to Elizabeth Guffey:
Retro embodies a communal memory of the recent past. To preserve it, a new kind of freelance historian has developed outside the mainstream of artistic and historical thought. This dynamic and ever-changing group of artists, architects, designers and writers revisit the past not as scholars, but as non-professional historians.

By wearing authentic retro clothes and using retro objects and performative language and etiquette, retro re-enactors offer a non-historical interpretation of history in the current environment. As fashion leaders, they use clothes and objects like words to create sentences out of the past. Longing for a time they eschew with different (higher) moral values, they literally “walk the walk and talk the talk” of days gone by.

Malcolm Barnard suggests “…a garment, an item of fashion or clothing, would be the medium or channel in which one person would ‘say’ something to another person with the intention of affecting some change in that other person.” Ironically, when Michael Atters speaks through his straw boater hat, he turns Umberto Eco’s phrase on its head in the full knowledge of the power clothing and etiquette hold when used as a language. He states: “The more effort in dress one takes, the more effort one takes in most other areas of presentation (including speech). The more we know of our past/roots/heritage, the more powerful on every level we become.” Here, Atters links two seemingly distinct notions, but to one effect. Firstly, he speaks of the impact of dress on personal behaviour, highlighting language as a prime example. Secondly, he proposes that historical knowledge empowers. As Atters states “…against all odds I fight on with my erect waxed moustache, alcohol and a passion to take the urine out of feeble pedestrian morons.”

Instead of trying to hide my past, I re-wear it. I cannot undress the fact I was biologically a girl, have been a fierce lesbian, still have a cunt and if I forget to take my T, bleed like a headless chicken even though I’ve been jabbing myself in the arse for well over a decade. Retrospectively, what once was is still here. As much as she is me, my he is refashioned by my fashion, and I can’t help but think that’s maybe why I love retro fashion the way I do. Looking back is looking forward. Some things are destined to remain timeless. Trans men are the shape of things to come. Our futures hang on our wardrobes.

e-j Scott is a featured writer in OP #5 , The Fashion Issue. All modern-day retro photos taken by Amos Mac. The photographs of Elliot and Danny, respectively, were first featured in OP #5, The Fashion Issue, as part of the Dandy spread.