#executiverealness

“In a ballroom, you can be anything you want. You’re not really an executive but you’re looking like an executive, and therefore you’re showing the straight world that I can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I could be one” — Dorian Corey, “Paris Is Burning”, 1990

I’m incredibly fascinated and intrigued by sartorial theory and studies because fashion, in many ways like philosophy, encompasses so much of the human experience. Philosophy cannot be confined to only one area of study or interest, and likewise, fashion is also a spectrum of fields, topics and disciplines.

[As a caveat, I am no fashion expert, and there’s definitely better examples of executive realness that can be found in media. I simply write what I see and think.]

In this quote from the LEGENDARY ballroom ICON Dorian Corey in “Paris Is Burning”, she encapsulates exactly how clothing can emulate or embody a particular experience.

From the ties, to the suit jackets, to the beiges/navy blues/browns/blacks/whites, to the glasses and cufflinks, to all the other miscellaneous yet necessary elements that signals to others, “I am a CEO”, “I am an executive”.

Yes it’s the person behind the outfit that sells the fantasy, but it’s this collaboration between clothing, body and spirit that ultimately would not be achievable without the clothes themselves. We must stop pretending that clothes aren’t important. Besides the color of my skin, my clothes are one of the first parts of me a stranger interacts with — with many of their senses. My clothes are an extension of myself, because what I choose to wear, as with what I choose to say, means something. My clothes are communicative.

In subcultures like the black/brown, trans and queer siblings we see throughout this film, clothing can fulfill dreams that society is not yet brave enough to believe in. The clothing depicted in this film allows these individuals to make statements that they are otherwise silenced from — barred, discredited, discouraged or prevented from — saying.

Anyways, I really wanted an excuse to post photos I think embody executive realness. Because in spite of the conventions of business-wear that have been already set, I believe the principles of the genre are made to be renewed, innovated, or even subverted, to expand the spectrum of what Executive Realness really is. Why limit the fantasy to just one look?