The Washington Post, March 14, 1997, pp. G1, G6:
Fashion. Tom of Finland: Pecs on the Chic
A Line of Sportswear in Muscle Tones
By Robin Givhan
The bodacious men thundering across the stage have powerful,
lumberjack shoulders and the whittled waists of elite
swimmers. Their legs are gnarled by swollen quadriceps and
coursing veins. Biceps flex with each move of their massive
arms. Their clothes -- skimpy though they are -- cling to
every hill and valley.
They are the male equivalent to the pinup girl.
The models revel in playing to an audience ravenous for
something a little wicked. One young man's hand teasingly
slides along his inner thigh.
This spectacle, under cover of night in New York's
meat-packing district, is a fashion show staged by Tom of
Finland Clothing. The appreciative audience is composed of
fashion chroniclers, supportive friends and fans, and a few
gentlemen who are getting lightheaded at the sight of so much
bulging masculinity.
Fall '97 is only the second season for Tom of Finland
Clothing, designed by David Johnson and Gary Robinson. Beneath
the cloud of testosterone is a collection of tight sportswear
created for men who want to show off spectacular physiques.
There is some camouflage, some polar fleece, some leather and
lace-front pants. The silhouettes hug the body, the fabrics
stretch, and the styles draw from the uniforms of police
officers, outdoorsmen, mechanics and military men.
The clothes celebrate an ideal epitomized in the illustrations
of Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, who died
in 1991. For more than a generation of gay men, who were faced
only with the stereotype of the foppish queen, the audacious
drawings of Tom of Finland offered them an alternative butch
standard.
Tom's men had the broad shoulders and tight waist associated
with the male ideal. His men were so defined and sculpted
their bodies were like exaggerated, anatomically correct
erotic dreams. They were beyond perfection, beyond the realm
of the possible.
"As an artist, he glorified the male farm," Robinson says. "We
spend so much of the time glorifying the female form, there's
nothing wrong with saying, 'I work out. I want to show my
body.' And without going for that '60s peacock form.
"Men across the board can wear a great pair of jeans, a rain
poncho or a well-cut vest," Robinson says. "There's nothing
homoerotic about the clothes," although he adds that some of
Laaksonen's drawings "were very erotic."
The hyper-masculine style of some gay men -- ranging from
kitschy Village People cowboys and cops to leather daddies in
motorcycle boots and jackets -- can be traced back to the
imagery of Tom of Finland. He popularized tight jeans, the
woodsman look, uniform dressing and leather everything. The
illustrator created a modern-day iconic gay style. And much of
popular menswear owes a great debt to that gay aesthetic.
John Bartlett was inspired by the work of Tom of Finland when,
about a year ago, he presented his influential runway show of
buff models in tight-fitting clothes. Bartlett's work, among
several designers', led to a shift away from loose fitting,
boxy silhouettes to more close to-the-body styles. Parisian
Jean-Paul Gaultier's beefy sailor boys and his macho behemoths
in kilts reflect Tom of Finland's aesthetic. And in more
subtle ways, designers who emphasize a hyperbolic masculinity
such as Thierry Mugler, Ray Dragon and the design team Richard
Edwards, owe a debt to Tom of Finland.
Even the ubiquitous casual summer uniform of denim shorts and
hiking boots, worn by everyone from Dupont Circle musclemen to
Capitol Hill junior bureaucrats, has distant roots in Tom of
Finland's love for lumberjacks.
The artist was born in Finland in 1920 and started his career
in advertising, eventually becoming an art director at
McCann-Erickson Advertising in Helsinki. His first idealized
male sketch was published in 1957, in a muscle magazine called
Physique Pictorial. It was an erotic beefcake illustration
that made a host of gay boys quiver.
"I was a kid and they wouldn't sell a dirty book to a
12-year-old kid, so I had to steal it," says F. Valentine
Hooven III, who designed the catalogue for the 1994-95 Berlin
retrospective -- the largest ever -- of the illustrator's
work.
"It's like when people say, 'Where were you when JFK was
killed?' For a gay guy, it's where were you when you saw your
first Tom of Finland drawing?" Hooven says.
"Earlier drawings pretended to be all about health and
strength and not about sex," Hooven says. "Tom's drawings
openly said this guy is sexy.... Homosexuality was that love
that dare not speak its name. With Tom, it wasn't going to be
that way. These were happy men. Proud men." Whether they were
soaring naked through the air on a trapeze, squatting nude --
except for a pair of motorcycle boots on a wooden crate, or
being, uh, frisked by cops, they bore contented expressions.
Tom of Finland's work was collected by artists Andy Warhol and
Robert Mapplethorpe, and a biographical film, "Daddy and the
Muscle Academy," was financed by the Finnish government and
two Finnish television stations. The Tom of Finland
Foundation, based in Los Angeles, was founded to preserve and
promote erotic art. The foundation licensed the name to the
clothing company.
In addition to drawings of Paul Bunyan types, To, of Finland's
illustrations are filled with fetishistic references to cops,
sailors, security guards, and more disturbingly, Nazis. "Some
times the attraction of the uniform is so powerful in me that
I get the feeling that I am making love to the clothes and the
man inside is just there to hold them up and give them shape,
sort at like an animated department store dummy," reads a Tom
of Finland quote from the retrospective catalogue.
The illustrator managed to separate fascist propaganda and
atrocities from totalitarian style in order to eroticize Nazi
uniforms.
"In my drawings there is no politics, no ideological
statements," declares another entry in the catalogue. "I am
thinking only of the drawing itself. The whole Nazi ideology,
the extremism, is hateful to me, but nevertheless I had to
draw them -- they had the uniforms!"
His illustrations have been used as examples of the ways in
which fetishism infiltrates the general consciousness through
fashion.
Writes fashion historian Valerie Steele in "Fetish Fashion,
Sex & Power": "Uniformed authority figures, such as military
and police officers, are still the focus of considerable
sexual interest among both gay and straight men. (There is
some evidence that they may also appeal sexually to gay and
straight women.)"
Certainly the last few years produced fashion that would have
titillated Tom of Finland. Fall '96 was the season of the
uniform, with men's and women's fashion filled with details
such as brass buttons, epaulets, flat-front trousers, and
military blues and khakis.
"As designers and as gay men, we've been sort of -- not
inundated -- but [Tom's work has] always been present in our
lives," says Johnson. "It's something that pervades a
designer's work even if they aren't doing a Tom of Finland
line."
[Three photos and two drawings]
[End]
Fashion. Tom of Finland: Pecs on the Chic
A Line of Sportswear in Muscle Tones
By Robin Givhan
The bodacious men thundering across the stage have powerful,
lumberjack shoulders and the whittled waists of elite
swimmers. Their legs are gnarled by swollen quadriceps and
coursing veins. Biceps flex with each move of their massive
arms. Their clothes -- skimpy though they are -- cling to
every hill and valley.
They are the male equivalent to the pinup girl.
The models revel in playing to an audience ravenous for
something a little wicked. One young man's hand teasingly
slides along his inner thigh.
This spectacle, under cover of night in New York's
meat-packing district, is a fashion show staged by Tom of
Finland Clothing. The appreciative audience is composed of
fashion chroniclers, supportive friends and fans, and a few
gentlemen who are getting lightheaded at the sight of so much
bulging masculinity.
Fall '97 is only the second season for Tom of Finland
Clothing, designed by David Johnson and Gary Robinson. Beneath
the cloud of testosterone is a collection of tight sportswear
created for men who want to show off spectacular physiques.
There is some camouflage, some polar fleece, some leather and
lace-front pants. The silhouettes hug the body, the fabrics
stretch, and the styles draw from the uniforms of police
officers, outdoorsmen, mechanics and military men.
The clothes celebrate an ideal epitomized in the illustrations
of Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, who died
in 1991. For more than a generation of gay men, who were faced
only with the stereotype of the foppish queen, the audacious
drawings of Tom of Finland offered them an alternative butch
standard.
Tom's men had the broad shoulders and tight waist associated
with the male ideal. His men were so defined and sculpted
their bodies were like exaggerated, anatomically correct
erotic dreams. They were beyond perfection, beyond the realm
of the possible.
"As an artist, he glorified the male farm," Robinson says. "We
spend so much of the time glorifying the female form, there's
nothing wrong with saying, 'I work out. I want to show my
body.' And without going for that '60s peacock form.
"Men across the board can wear a great pair of jeans, a rain
poncho or a well-cut vest," Robinson says. "There's nothing
homoerotic about the clothes," although he adds that some of
Laaksonen's drawings "were very erotic."
The hyper-masculine style of some gay men -- ranging from
kitschy Village People cowboys and cops to leather daddies in
motorcycle boots and jackets -- can be traced back to the
imagery of Tom of Finland. He popularized tight jeans, the
woodsman look, uniform dressing and leather everything. The
illustrator created a modern-day iconic gay style. And much of
popular menswear owes a great debt to that gay aesthetic.
John Bartlett was inspired by the work of Tom of Finland when,
about a year ago, he presented his influential runway show of
buff models in tight-fitting clothes. Bartlett's work, among
several designers', led to a shift away from loose fitting,
boxy silhouettes to more close to-the-body styles. Parisian
Jean-Paul Gaultier's beefy sailor boys and his macho behemoths
in kilts reflect Tom of Finland's aesthetic. And in more
subtle ways, designers who emphasize a hyperbolic masculinity
such as Thierry Mugler, Ray Dragon and the design team Richard
Edwards, owe a debt to Tom of Finland.
Even the ubiquitous casual summer uniform of denim shorts and
hiking boots, worn by everyone from Dupont Circle musclemen to
Capitol Hill junior bureaucrats, has distant roots in Tom of
Finland's love for lumberjacks.
The artist was born in Finland in 1920 and started his career
in advertising, eventually becoming an art director at
McCann-Erickson Advertising in Helsinki. His first idealized
male sketch was published in 1957, in a muscle magazine called
Physique Pictorial. It was an erotic beefcake illustration
that made a host of gay boys quiver.
"I was a kid and they wouldn't sell a dirty book to a
12-year-old kid, so I had to steal it," says F. Valentine
Hooven III, who designed the catalogue for the 1994-95 Berlin
retrospective -- the largest ever -- of the illustrator's
work.
"It's like when people say, 'Where were you when JFK was
killed?' For a gay guy, it's where were you when you saw your
first Tom of Finland drawing?" Hooven says.
"Earlier drawings pretended to be all about health and
strength and not about sex," Hooven says. "Tom's drawings
openly said this guy is sexy.... Homosexuality was that love
that dare not speak its name. With Tom, it wasn't going to be
that way. These were happy men. Proud men." Whether they were
soaring naked through the air on a trapeze, squatting nude --
except for a pair of motorcycle boots on a wooden crate, or
being, uh, frisked by cops, they bore contented expressions.
Tom of Finland's work was collected by artists Andy Warhol and
Robert Mapplethorpe, and a biographical film, "Daddy and the
Muscle Academy," was financed by the Finnish government and
two Finnish television stations. The Tom of Finland
Foundation, based in Los Angeles, was founded to preserve and
promote erotic art. The foundation licensed the name to the
clothing company.
In addition to drawings of Paul Bunyan types, To, of Finland's
illustrations are filled with fetishistic references to cops,
sailors, security guards, and more disturbingly, Nazis. "Some
times the attraction of the uniform is so powerful in me that
I get the feeling that I am making love to the clothes and the
man inside is just there to hold them up and give them shape,
sort at like an animated department store dummy," reads a Tom
of Finland quote from the retrospective catalogue.
The illustrator managed to separate fascist propaganda and
atrocities from totalitarian style in order to eroticize Nazi
uniforms.
"In my drawings there is no politics, no ideological
statements," declares another entry in the catalogue. "I am
thinking only of the drawing itself. The whole Nazi ideology,
the extremism, is hateful to me, but nevertheless I had to
draw them -- they had the uniforms!"
His illustrations have been used as examples of the ways in
which fetishism infiltrates the general consciousness through
fashion.
Writes fashion historian Valerie Steele in "Fetish Fashion,
Sex & Power": "Uniformed authority figures, such as military
and police officers, are still the focus of considerable
sexual interest among both gay and straight men. (There is
some evidence that they may also appeal sexually to gay and
straight women.)"
Certainly the last few years produced fashion that would have
titillated Tom of Finland. Fall '96 was the season of the
uniform, with men's and women's fashion filled with details
such as brass buttons, epaulets, flat-front trousers, and
military blues and khakis.
"As designers and as gay men, we've been sort of -- not
inundated -- but [Tom's work has] always been present in our
lives," says Johnson. "It's something that pervades a
designer's work even if they aren't doing a Tom of Finland
line."
[Three photos and two drawings]
[End]