• 복식
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• 제51권1호
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• pp.163-174
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to review the features of eroticism expressed in men's fashion, to explain psychological and social contexts which engender eroticism and to analyze in what way eroticism is portrayed in men s fashion in this context. Eroticism as the metonymy of forbidden sexual desire, has been embodied mostly in visual forms such as picture and photo. From a psychoanalytic view, the context in which eroticism is formed can be explained by primary narcissism and fetishism. Primary narcissism is the feeling of satisfaction with the self in which the subject who is admiring and the object of admiration are one and the same. Accordingly, in order to give rise to eroticism, both subject and object have to exist. Fetishism, the metonymy of castrated penis, is also one of the factors to produce eroticism. Metaphorically seen as a woman who has a penis, a man who dresses in the same manner as a woman dresses can be a source of eroticism to gays. From a sociological view, the context in which eroticism is fostered depends on the dynamic relations among social powers. In these relations, who is a subject or who is an object has been continuously changing. In the Post-modern culture appearing in the late 20th century, power begins to take various forms, and gays and women who had never been subjects begin to make man an object of eroticism. The other point is that social morality, ignoring desire itself, objectifies sexual desire and seeks to remove It by exchanging it for objectified symbols. The design elements provoking eroticism in men s fashion are exposure and decoration. In particular, models in exposure and decorative fashion have been objectified through the methods of fragmentation rather than showing the whole figure or removing a person s individuality or will,.