I recently witnessed an excellent production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was an outstanding collaboration between Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly on reworking a Roald Dahl classic; Matilda, A Musical. Unfortunately its run has ended* but for me there were two things that I adored about it, the staging and ‘Trunch’ played fantastically by Bertie Carvel. With a name like Bertie he’s obviously a man and performed the domineering, ex-Olympian like every image of the female Trunchbull that you’ve ever seen; of course it’s all padding, wigs and makeup.
The transformation of man into woman has long been a familiar sight but has cropped up a number of times recently from Matt Lucas and David Walliams in Come Fly with Me, James Franco appearing as Marilyn Monroe at the 83rd Academy Awards and the cross-dressing turns in Let’s Dance for Comic Relief. Lucas and Walliams say that to be repeatedly funny there has to be something more than the image of a man in a dress yet over the past few weeks there has been nothing remotely funny about some of the reporting of one man wearing female clothing.
Serbian-born and nineteen years old, Andrej Pejic has walked for Jean Paul Gaultier, Raf Simons, Paul Smith and John Galliano and, as I type this, it’s just been announced that he’ll be shot for Vogue in their next issue.
Some of the vitriol that’s been leveled at him is extraordinary from claims that he’s “Fashion’s ultimate insult to women” to “more like the bride of Frankenstein” by one particularly vicious article.
What I really don’t understand is that men who dress as women for comedy is seen as perfectly acceptable; women who wear male clothing are often seen as provocative, risqué and sexy; yet a man wearing women’s clothing for fashion is reported as the final curtain call for “real women”.
No doubt this far-too-outrageous-to-be-genuine is another example of the bloodthirsty press, their switch permanently set to ‘outraged’, busy placing one article highlighting the cellulite of one celebrity directly above a piece chastising another for being too thin without a whisper of irony.
Personally I’ve never been tempted to put on a dress, regardless of how stunning it was, but I know that fashion is about pushing boundaries, trying new things and improving on ideas from the past. The impressive wedding dress that Pejic walked for Gaultier is what is actually for sale and nowhere is there a ‘For men only’ label.
Some of the negative comments revolve around the illogical notion that designers don’t find women thin enough or attractive enough so they’re turning to men instead. They again highlight the classic controversy on the physical look of models and the impact on young people but I find it hard to believe that Andrej Pejic is going to inspire a generation of women to start taping up their cleavage and putting a pair of socks down the front of their pants.
*A year before Matilda's West End staging was announced Matilda had a short run at the RSC's Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
*A year before Matilda's West End staging was announced Matilda had a short run at the RSC's Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
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