Soupbone Collective

MASC SUMMER FASHION UTOPIA

Phoebe Pan and Margaret Schnabel

At the end of this piece, you’ll find a printable paper doll: inspired by ye olde paper dolls of yore, we’ve drawn our very own masc summer fashion utopia doll for you to cut out and dress up! Feel free to fill in each article of clothing with your own designs, patterns, and colors.


June 18, 2024

Dearest Phoebe,

Starting our email chain off bright and early this summer morning! We’re at the beginning of a heat wave; I’ve already changed once this morning (and cut up a t-shirt) to cope.

Some questions I’d like your answers to, to get the sartorial ball rolling:

  1. How do you pick out an outfit on a typical summer morning? How long does it take?
  2. What’s your best thrift find of the summer?
  3. (If applicable) what’s your best non-thrift find—retail purchase, gift, etc.?
  4. What do you envy when you see other mascs (and/or men) in their summer clothes?
  5. What staple can you not live without?
  6. Do you want your style/presentation to change, in the near or far future? What would you change about your current closet, if you could?

Excited to hear back on any of the above that appeal to you!

xoxoxoxooxoxox,
Margaret



June 19, 2024

Dear M!

Funny we’re starting this convo during a heatwave——likewise, I’ve been taking cold showers and changing twice a day to try to escape the stickiness. The first thing that’s become apparent is that I don’t own enough shorts…

I’ll go through your questions out of order, I think, because I want to start with #4—it’s all about the silhouette, isn’t it? I’ve always envied menswear for its ability to hide the body. Like, cropped shirts are in vogue right now across all the men’s fashion accounts I follow, and it’s all about creating the illusion of longer legs or a more “proportional” torso/legs ratio. I find that women’s fashion has often been the opposite: it’s more about accentuating the body, highlighting curves, showing skin, and all that. I know I’m speaking in dichotomies and style is always changing, but at least, that’s the framework I grew up with.

That’s why summer is the roughest clothing season! It’s hard to hide under a tank top and pair of shorts. Wearing a binder in the summer is honestly horrible for me—so sweaty. So I guess my envy is less about clothing and more about transmasc folks who have gotten top surgery and get to walk around shirtless in the summer. I love that for them, and I want that for myself! Summer is the time when I sort of give up on picking out a nice outfit to wear. Anything to get me through the day—a graphic tee, some shorts, and that’s it. I will truly take at most two minutes to decide on an outfit in the summer, versus the five or ten minutes in the fall and winter (layers ftw).

Some questions for you:

COOL wishes,
Phoebe

P.S. Also, we’ve talked about queer awakenings at some point, but I’m curious to know if you had a specific “trans/genderqueer awakening”? Mine was Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke, way back when I first saw the film in high school… here he is, rocking those chest scars and shirtless sleeves:

a screenshot of ashitaka from hayao miyazaki's princess mononoke. his chest is bare with scars and he wears two blue sleeves on his arms, tied together by a string.


June 21, 2024

Phoebe Phoebe,

God, yes, re: silhouettes! What I envy most is the way t-shirts drape off of cis men: some magic in the shoulders and chest that makes it skim off of them instead of clinging. Even when I wear my binder, I don’t quite get the silhouette that I’m aiming for. (It’s also tricky for me, body-image wise; the compression up top makes the skin below pop out a bit, for me, & makes me comparatively self-conscious about my stomach. No way to win!) (Side note here on the problematic associations of androgyny with thinness…)

To answer your questions:

Do you find that it’s easier to search for masc clothing in thrift stores rather than retail spaces?

I thrift about 90% of my clothes at the moment, but for a whole mixed bag of reasons: it’s cheaper, it’s a sustainable/ethical option, and it makes me feel more in touch with local community than shopping at a big-box store. Re: masc fashion, though, it does have a number of advantages. Back when I dressed more femme, I loved how elaborate I could get with my outfits, how much I could decorate myself and create surprising, textured looks. Sometimes I find traditionally masc styles quite boring! Thrifting helps me find more unique pieces—a strangely-patterned shirt, a stupid tee, vintage bottoms. I also find that a lot of femme styles from yesteryear fit quite well into masc looks (and they fit my body better). It’s helped me to get out of the men’s-section/women’s-section mentality, because I walk into a thrift store and just see…heaps of fabric! Totally up to the wearer to decide what they mean or how they feel.

Have you tried any of those brands specifically marketed as “gender-neutral” (like Wildfang)?

No, actually! I had a brief crisis over shorts last month and was swayed by Instagram ads to check out Both&, but they actually don’t make pieces for people who are my height. (Cries in 5’10” nonbinary) Wildfang and similar androgynous brands don’t quite fit my style; they come off as a little 2012-twee, tipping-my-fedora-at-you to me. One day I’ll cave and buy a Big Bud Press piece, but for now I’m satisfied with my thrifty versions of those “vintage soft” tees.

Where do you look for outfit/clothing inspiration?

A lot of people in Boston have great street style, so I keep my eyes peeled whenever I go out! Surprisingly, I like Pinterest for fashion inspo; searching “masc fashion” explicitly rockets you back to 2012-fedora-land, but my algorithm has slowly shifted into showing me ethereal-vibrantly-colored-surreal-genderless items that please me deeply. I’ll attach some samples. How do you go about altering/crafting your own clothing?

Time to come clean…pretty much all of my t-shirts enter a t-shirt-to-cropped-tee-to-muscle-tank pipeline the second they land in my closet. I don’t really measure anything—just spread them out tight to create tension and go at them with my sharpest pair of scissors.​ I like cropping big tees so they don’t cling to my hips and I get the boxy look that I want. Next on my to-do list is cropping some button downs; I heard all the cool mascs are doing it. And I’m sure my shorts panic will soon result in cropping some baggy jeans and/or Dickies. I had a big fabric-paint moment a few years ago that’s coming back with a vengeance; it’s just so tempting to spruce up those plain tees and make them look…Worse. This summer I want to bleach some t-shirts! And do some cyanotypes!

And re: trans/genderqueer awakening, it happened slowly…the only gravitational center, if I had to try to pinpoint it, was my gradual understanding that not only was I attracted to boyishness in other people, I wanted to embody it in myself—and I could! (As the kids say: the problem of wanting Timothee Chalamet versus wanting to be Timothee Chalamet.)

For you:

xoxoxoxooxoxox,
M





July 1, 2024

Dear M,

That’s a great point on androgyny x thinness. I came across a book at the library the other day titled Androgyne: Fashion and Gender, compiled by Patrick Mauriès, and it contained mostly photos of——well, you guessed it. The book was weirdly fetishistic, compounded with the fact of the author barely being able to utter the word transgender… anyway!

Your point also made me think about the terms of “passing” in gender, which is obviously different from passing in racial terms, but still interesting to consider as an experience of blending into a “norm.” There are days when I literally want to look like an indistinguishable guy walking down the street, broad-shouldered and casting that very magic you described with the t-shirt draping——and then there are days when I think, maybe I just want to look like a bean sprout? or a cave goblin? or just something utterly baffling and genre-defying in all senses of gender and the space-time continuum?

Describe your current style in 3-8 words:

Dyke closet straight from Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman.

Where do you find fashion inspiration?

I think my sense of fashion often comes to me in sideways glances, in places where I’m not directly searching for cool outfits or looks. An example: I’m a bit of a bicycle nerd, and I follow this bike shop in Japan called Blue Lug——they sell an incredible array of niche bicycle parts, and I bought some stuff from them a while back for my custom bike build. I only recently noticed that I’ve been looking to their product photos for style inspo!

Sometimes, it comes from a specific aura I get from an object or particular article of clothing. I have a small obsession with old dice and knucklebones, and that’s translated into my growing collection of ceramic charm necklaces, which then led me to a phase where I really wanted to figure out what a “modern dyke wizard” outfit would look like.

Films and TV shows are also good sources… I didn’t grow up watching Sailor Moon, but Yeeseon once showed me some of the outfits from the show and I loved them. Historical films are fun, too, because I like to theorize costumes as ways of becoming someone else. There are specific actors that I might follow, too, less for their actual outfits and more for the energy they bring to their outfits. Josh O’Connor’s a good example of that: even in a nice shirt or jacket, he’s sleeping on the set of La Chimera in the grimiest of conditions with his mouth slightly open or his arm tucked into his chest, and it’s the perfect illusion of “Funny-Looking Actor Is Hot In His Seeming Ordinariness.”

What’s your current favorite outfit?

Currently love a good “Mr. Darcy” billowy shirt (rolled up sleeves for bonus points) tucked into a pair of shorts.

Questions for you!

Wishes,
P!





July 10, 2024

Phoebe on my mind,

WOW your mention of Josh O’Connor sent me down a profound Challengers rabbit hole including, importantly, that infamous churro scene…

Did you also feel so many things watching that movie??? I’m starting to realize that I’m probably a lesbian, and yet seeing Patrick and Art fight and flirt and compete with and love each other Really Did Something For Me—whether for gender-envy reasons or attraction reasons I’m not yet sure. (I’ll have to watch the movie a few dozen more times to figure it out.)

Went to my first official dyke event last night (“dyke descent”) at a local dive bar, and the variety of looks was staggering. Which gives me an entry point into your first question: I definitely saw a distinction last night between dyke and masc fashion. Some folks were wearing more traditionally masc outfits (black a-shirt, jorts), but I also saw the following looks:

In a proud moment, someone assumed I used they/them pronouns, which felt like a real sartorial win. (I wore: a blue lacy halter bralette underneath a brown lace-up vest left partially open; a silver pendant necklace on a black cord that my grandma got for me in a surprisingly perfect assessment of my taste this past Christmas; long acid-washed jorts; white sneakers long faded into beige.)

Butch/masc distinction feels harder to me, but maybe it’s a square-rectangle situation? Like butch falls within masc fashion and masc fashion is maybe more volatile and expansive with time whereas butch is bound to a bit more tradition?

If you could craft your own outfit head-to-toe from scratch, what would it be?

I want to feel SEXY!!! It used to be so much easier to craft a look that felt sexy (i.e. that I thought other people would find sexy) when I dressed femme; I just basically showed as much skin as possible. Now it’s so much harder to balance my subterranean subconscious gender whims with whatever amount of skin feels good to show that day with whatever fits the weather and vibe of the event. So if I could craft any outfit, it’d be one that made me feel super sexy without like I’m outfitting my body For Other People. What would that look like??? Ugh—maybe like big cargo pants that fit my waist perfectly and drape in a nice baggy way down my legs with plenty of length (always a struggle to find), and a corset like the crystals corset from Lirika Matoshi, or some jazzed-up basketball shorts and a cropped binder tank that doesn’t make me feel incapable of breathing and the perfect short-sleeved button down. I don’t know!! Where do you find sexiness in your outfits???

What kinds of outfits do you look forward to wearing the most, whether they’re your most frequent or least frequent outfits?

Any outfit with one of my beloved vests <33 I don’t know what itch vests have been scratching for me for the past 1.5 years, but man are they efficient.

Maybe we call our email exchange here, unless any other thoughts come to mind? Is there anything you wish I’d asked that I haven’t???

Leaving you with: https://www.tiktok.com/@androgynouslut/video/7386469020960083231?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7370340609427064362

Hugs,
M



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