Binders are the antithesis of a bra. Bras, with their tendency to be colourful and embellished, are available in wild and wondrous patterns and shapes of every sort; they’re built to cup and lift, and designed to be seen and admired. Binders, on the other hand, are plain and inconspicuous, built to be worn like a second skin and designed not for the eye, but simply to perform a purpose; they flatten and shape a chest, creating a more masculine, square form for those who don’t wish to show their breasts. Bras have been considered beautiful and often liberating—but who says binders can’t be too? Kyle Lasky shows binders as a work of art in “Presence In Absense,” a photo series that captures the pain, liberation, and beauty in binders.

Kyle is a queer photographer based in Toronto who has just launched their first solo show with “Presence in Absence” this month at the female-friendly sex shop Come As You Are. Kyle chose binders because, “for a lot of people who bind, a binder is the final layer in undressing, so these photos actually function as nudes, they’re portraits of bare chests.” By presenting the binder as a chest itself, the wish of the wearer is being granted; the photos show almost no sign of a traditionally feminine form.

Binders are essentially an extremely tight fitting sort of modern version of a corset, and are used exclusively to flatten breasts and create a male contour chest. They’re worn almost equally by masculine identified people and feminine identified people, and most importantly they provide a surgery-free option of comfort for those who can’t afford the expenses and down-time a mastectomy can demand.


A self portrait of photographer, Kyle Lasky

Binders aren’t new to Kyle. “When I first started binding five years ago I tried one on and I looked in the mirror and just started crying, because I’d never been able to see myself in that way, and feel so happy about the way that I looked. It definitely is freeing to bind, but it is also straining… Now there’s a lot of shame for me. My binder and my binding is extremely personal and painful. It’s literally a weight I have to bare. I’ve found that after I started hormones I essentially stopped binding because I was passing so much without binding that it became unnecessary. I wasn’t questioned based on my face so I found people didn’t look to my body to answer their questions, they just took me literally at face value.” But as time passes and their comfort levels shift, Kyle often has to revert back to binding. “It’s a struggle for me, and a constant issue I have to deal with all day every day. I’m uncomfortable with my chest but I’m also uncomfortable with binding because it’s such a painful experience. I’m either more comfortable in my body and in pain physically from binding, or uncomfortable in my body but not in pain.”

Kyle’s discomfort with binding plays a part of the creation of the show. Each piece (there are 12 in total) has a suggested price, although buyers are welcome to pay more, and the proceeds from the show are being split between sending binders to other countries where they’re not available, and funding Kyle’s top surgery.

Want to read more related to this subject? Check out “Unbinding Binaries” in Issue 13.

text by Alyssa Garrison
photos by Kyle Lasky

From a young age, the line “Being plastic is fantastic!,” always associated with Barbie, was ingrained in my head. I never thought too critically about it—it was a catchy little rhyme—but as I grew older, I began to see just how warped the message being sold to my Barbie-obsessed friends and me was. To this day, I maintain a love-hate relationship with Barbie: the girl’s got style, and I can’t help but admire her determination to experiment with every career from veterinarian to pizza maker; however, her body type has been proven multiple times to be beyond realistic, a narrowly idealized figure being sold to young girls as the pinnacle of beauty. It’s not just that Barbie and friends lack diversity in their shape: her form is downright impossible to achieve.

You can imagine how excited I was to stumble upon Margaux Lange, a New York-based jewelry designer who seems to share my sentiments. She created The Plastic Body Series: a handmade accessories line which pays homage to pop culture’s fascination with Barbie by salvaging old doll parts and transforming them into wearable art. As sweetly nostalgic as they are creepily Lynchian, the accessories themselves are a psychedelic gaggle of doll heads dangling from necklaces and disembodied eyes peaking out of rings. While one typically wouldn’t think of “dismembered female body parts” as empowering, it somehow works when the body in question was totally artificial to begin with. By reworking different Barbie parts into pieces, including a necklace that is a mash-up of different plastic chests, the result feels like a wearable statement forcing society to critically examine those plastic body parts constantly deemed beautiful. Plus, Lange’s work has given me the ultimate D.I.Y. inspiration for how to transform the Barbies that I was never able to purge and alter them to fit my teenage self. Perhaps next up will be decapitating Furbies for a new accessories line.

text by Emma from The Emma Edition

At first glance, we seem bombarded with clothing options. Never before in history have there been so many stores and styles to chose from. Don’t like the ‘fast fashion’ of the malls? There are vintage shops a-plenty. Having trouble finding a specific item you see in your mind? Go online and you’ll probably uncover something similar.

As clothing has become more and more central to our identities, styles have multiplied exponentially, like molecules in a petri dish.

But not everyone is represented in the innumerable items on the rack. As Jeanne Beker recently wrote about a friend of hers who uses a wheelchair, many people still get left out of the fashion industry despite declarations of democracy.

Karen Bowersox, an entrepreneur from Mentor, Ohio, noticed that it didn’t matter how many times her granddaughter Maggie rolled up her jeans. They never fit properly, and she was left constantly tripping over them.

Maggie has Down syndrome, the condition caused by the presence of an extra 21st chromosome. People with Down syndrome often share physical characteristics such as thicker necks, short limbs, slanting shoulders and protruding stomachs, which makes finding clothes exceedingly difficult. Traditionally, people with Down syndrome and their parents would adjust regular clothes. Getting every piece of clothing custom-made or tailored is something only a Parisian couture-buyer could afford.

Bowersox discovered no one was producing clothing specifically for people with Down syndrome. Despite having no background in fashion, she founded Downs Designs. She initially thought that she could just alter pre-existing clothes, but realized that there were enough unique issues to warrant starting from scratch. Designer Jillian Jankovsky came on board and the women began work on an entirely new system of sizing, which they called ‘Down Sizing.’

“Because of the enormous task of creating a size that had never existed before,” Bowersox says, “We started with adult-size jeans and a simple long-sleeve t-shirt.” To accommodate larger stomachs (caused by low muscle tone), Downs Designs offers jeans which are lower in the front. As people with Down Syndrome often have trouble with buttons and zippers, the pants feature elastic waistbands.

Although she had the help of eight testers with Down syndrome, Bowersox wanted to be sure her clothing would fit a good cross-section of people. It would have been tragic if, after all the work, her clothes still didn’t fit right. She packed up her samples and set out for The National Down Syndrome Congress Conference in Orlando, Florida. With nothing for sale yet, she enlisted attendees to try on the clothes. Based on their feedback, she made modifications.

“There are six million people in the world with Down syndrome and they come in all shapes and sizes. But over these last two years I feel that we have captured their uniqueness and will be able to accommodate most in some capacity.”

Finding a company to make the clothes was another trial. American manufacturers thought it was too risky an endeavor. The so-called democratization of fashion only works when money’s involved. Eventually Bowersox found a jeans factory in China willing to make the pants, which led her to another one for shirts. She and Jankovsky have flown there to see the factories themselves and pick out fabrics.

Currently offering staples like jeans and shirts, Bowersox wants to move Downs Designs into different areas, including more items for children and teens. Whether there is a large enough market for Downs Designs in the long run is impossible to know yet, but so far the response has been encouraging.

“I am in awe over the support I have received,” Bowersox says. “Mothers from all over the world have shared their gratitude… By the time my 6-year-old granddaughter cares what she wears, I hope she can shop at ‘grandma’s store’ for all her needs. I hope she will grow up with one less challenge in her life.”

There are all sorts of clothes out there to help you become a Goth or Punk, a Business Woman or a Vintage Queen. But we also need a diversity of clothing to help give everybody the chance to decide how they want to express themselves. Clothing can help create a myriad of identities, but sometimes the most important one for a person whose shirt has never fit right is Respected Human Being.

text by Max Mosher
images courtesy of Karen Bowersox

Do you remember that moment when you realized you really liked fashion? That transition when your interest in dress, adornment and clothing went from a passive form of enjoyment to an unquenchable curiousity?

Perhaps it happened with an article that gave you the history and context of a particular style, a detail on a pair of pants that you knew must be modeled on something rather old but couldn’t quite place, a list of required classes for a fashion degree, obscure titles cited in the pages of magazines (including, ahem, Worn Fashion Journal). You found questions you never knew you could ask. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to put on the dress; you needed to know its conceptual and cultural story. There are the questions you start to obsessively ask:

Did fashion play a part in any of the suffragist movements? Why does the human brain like repeating patterns, and why do we put them on our clothing? What are the socioeconomic demographics behind modern hipster fashion? How many shoes would your average Victorian lady have owned in her lifetime? What about her maid? And why? And where did we get that rule that horizontal stripes are not slimming?

These are the questions that have been plaguing many of the fashion students, journalists, history majors, artists, and other individuals amongst you. What are your research options? Who are the gatekeepers to the information you might be interested in? How far could you take your search? With this series, we aim to help you find the next steps, to get your vintage brogue-clad foot into the door of fashion research opportunities.

Part 1: Fashion and Research
Mapping Your Path

Before jumping into a fashion research project, focus and develop your search. Knowing precisely what you’re asking will give your research direction and give you confidence when asking for help. Sometimes, what seems like the obvious is often the most overlooked. We all know how exciting geeking out over fashion research is, but make sure you don’t skip the first steps.

Ask the smart questions
Let’s say you’ve been wondering about hosiery. What about it compels you? Are you asking about its invention? Modern production? Cultural implications in one decade or another? Those seams up the back of the leg in the 1940s? All of the above? Keep a list of synonymous keywords for your search (when there is nothing to be found on cravats, you’ll be reminded to broaden your search to ties or neckties).

Know the type of information that’s out there
You are fascinated by designer Madeleine Vionnet, but want to find more beyond the first page of Google results. The next step depends on how far along you are in your research. Keep an open mind to types of first and second-hand documents out there: book-length biographies, short encyclopedia entries on her life, personal papers and sketches, academic articles on the designer’s greater impact on 20th century design, and photographs of her work are all great resources to keep an eye out for.

Figure out where you’re going
Depending on your question, fields like anthropology, sociology, history, art history, literature, and even some of the sciences might be your best hope for the information you seek. Typing the word “fashion” into your keyword search could derail you from a wealth of information. If your question involves fabric dye, for example, your search might meander through field studies of indigenous cultures, a review of colours depicted in 18th century portraiture, the chemistry of tannins used to cure leather, or a study of D.I.Y. social networking sites instructing on dye techniques today.

Keep your audience in mind
Is the purpose of your research personal, professional, or academic? Will you keep track of sources to refer to later, or possibly cite them in your writing? In an academic or professional setting, the validity of your findings is key. Even if not required to cite sources, a wise researcher is able to on request. If using images for publication, remember that you may need copyright permission.

Documenting your search also serves as a trail of breadcrumbs: should your search peter out in one direction, you can go back and take it in another. If you write a blog entry on the topic but later decide to write a full-length dissertation, your notes should be thorough enough that you don’t have to repeat your search. Keep in mind that quality resources do not only inform, but also direct you elsewhere for further information. Internet resources, academic papers and reference books are often valuable not for their content, but for the content they direct you to. The very question you are working on has probably been asked before, in one way or another. What did this author find, and where? Become a master of bookmarking your web results, whether in a web browser folder or on a bookmarking site like Delicious.com.

In asking these questions about your question, you will be adding some depth and breadth to it. Giving yourself some options, and plenty of room for creative searching. Keep notes of everything you can, and return to them if your search is frustrating. Treat your question as an equation: concise and deliberate. Next you’ll determine where to start looking!

Keep posted on www.wornjournal.com for part 2, coming soon!

text by Christy Shannon Smirl
graphic by Rachel Stevens