Negotiating gender nonconformity and queer sexualities in editorial fashion photography
My research examines the processes through which the fashion industry manages representations of gender nonconformity and queer sexualities in editorial photography.
In contrast with representation studies that analyse images already in circulation, I bring attention to the production processes prior to the publication of images. Drawing from interviews with 21 practitioners such as fashion directors, press officers, stylists, casting directors, I reflect on their experiences of navigating an industry that oversees the achievement, compromise, or rejection of images alluding to gender nonconformity and queer sexualities.
The research highlights the paradox of fashion being perceived as a queer hub whilst fashion production is embedded within cis-heteronormative regulations, standardised processes, and policies of various scales. Systems such as gendered sizing or policies that regulate the use of womenswear and menswear hinders possibilities in casting and styling gender nonconforming models.
Fashion workers—many to whom queerness is central to their lived experiences—respond to the industry's limitations by developing alternative ways of styling and casting that are eventually integrated into more inclusive processes of image production. Yet these alternatives emerge from experiences of discrimination, marginalisation, and exhaustion of LGBTQ+ workers navigating a cis-heteronormative system of fashion production. I thus expose the emotional and creative labour of queer communities in resisting and transforming an industry established on the distinction between menswear and womenswear.
Connecting literature on creative labour, fashion studies, and queer theory, the research reveals what is at stake in key processes shaping representations of gender in visual culture.