Nick Rees-Roberts

French queer cinema

Introduction 1. Beur Masculinity and Queer Fantasy 2. Down and Out: Immigrant 3. Mauvais genres: Transgender and Gay Identity 4: Queer Sexuality, AIDS and Loss 5: The Emergence of Queer DIY Video.

Down and out: immigrant poverty and queer sexuality in Sébastien Lifshitz's Wild Side (2004)

Abstract Wild Side takes up the sexual dynamics of the current climate of social authoritarianism instigated by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose continuing hard-line policy on immigration and sex work has airbrushed the extremism of Le Pen into a package of reforms pleasing to much middle-class France. Situating Lifshitz in the evolving genre of French Queer Cinema, I argue that Wild Side points to precarious material lives for those excluded from neo-liberal hegemony—immigrants, sex workers and transgender communities.

Boys Keep Swinging: The Fashion Iconography of Hedi Slimane

Abstract The arrival of designer Hedi Slimane at Christian Dior in 2000 marked an epoch change in mens style. Slimanes reputation is founded on having streamlined and rejuvenated the male silhouette through the promotion of a skinny style appropriated from youth subcultures. Slimanes rebranding of the Dior menswear line (from the fusty Christian Dior Monsieur to the hip Dior Homme) adapted a range of urban street styles to suit the in-house tradition of classicism and bourgeois elegance. This article sets out to assess the designers conscious reworking of masculinity, replacing virile men with skinny boys, perceived as the clearest paradigm shift in male fashion imagery since Armani, as well as tracking Slimanes impact on the landscape of contemporary fashion. Along with Tom Ford, Slimane is emblematic of the rise of the “creative director” engineering not only the various collections but also the brands visual identity right down to store design and the architecture of the Dior Homme boutiques worldwide. This article situates Slimanes designs more broadly within the history of popular culture and the visual arts through a contextual focus on his cultural references and influences (notably David Bowies Berlin and the British rock music scene), alongside coverage of his recent photographic work on American youth cultures.

New French Luxury: Art, Fashion and the Re-invention of a National Brand

Abstract The language of luxury goods in the early twenty-first century increasingly resembles the language of art – terms such as “investment piece” or “limited edition” are now integrated into fashion discourse. Concentrated in the main French corporate holdings – LVMH and Kering, or in privately owned companies such as Hermès and Chanel – the global luxury fashion brands now invest heavily in the art market to expand their influence across a broad spectrum of the visual arts, cinema, design, and architecture, to create a new intersectional definition of luxury within the global creative industries. In this article, we examine a number of case studies of collaborations between the leading Paris fashion houses and contemporary artists to illustrate this phenomenon and we conclude by arguing that the globalization of the luxury economy and the commercial expansion of the French fashion houses (targeting the consumer economies of the BRICS and the Middle East) has seen the image of France revitalized across the globe.

Raf Simons and Interdisciplinary Fashion from Post-Punk to Neo-Modern

Abstract Since the launch of his menswear label in 1995, Belgian designer Raf Simons has consistently caught the zeitgeist of contemporary fashion, supplying menswear with a range of styles, shapes, and symbols that articulate ideals of masculinity, influenced by European pop music, youth subcultures, mid-century fine art, modernist architecture, and interior design. This article examines the interdisciplinary relationship between Simons’ designs and their contextual influences, documenting how his signature, first established in menswear, has been transformed through his womenswear collections for Jil Sander (2005-12) and since 2012 for Christian Dior, where he has reinterpreted the houses couture heritage. Drawing on archive material at the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp and the Dior Impressions exhibition at the Christian Dior museum in Granville in 2013, this article further argues that a cross-gender dynamic is perceptible in Simons’ later designs, part of his formal or “neo-modern” preoccupation with shape, color, and technology. The article concludes by suggesting that Simons’ nomination at one of the most prestigious of the Parisian fashion houses and global luxury brands positions him as heir to the artistic and architectural strand of the couturiers legacy, making him instrumental in Diors projection of its design heritage.