Matthew Han

In my graduate thesis collection, Making a Man, I explore the sexual ambiguity born of the separation of masculinity from maleness. I compare the homosocial and heterosocial male cultures of the European Renaissance with the globalized culture of the world today, examining contemporary male tropes and their associations along with those from history in an attempt to identify what has changed and what has remained. I investigate themes of muscularity, virility, fragility, and opulence, combining attributes of the Renaissance wardrobe with those of contemporary staples. The collection recognizes and questions boys’ phallocentric mindset and plays with the delicacy of manhood itself through subversive messages, challenging and altogether re-contextualizing what masculinity is today.