Garçonne (female type)

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Marlene Dietrich in male clothes in the film Morocco
Actress Louise Brooks with bob hair
Women's tuxedo by Yves Saint Laurent

Garçonne is a name for an androgynous type of woman. The term was derived from the French word "Garçon" for "boy".

History of the term

The term “Garçonne” first appeared in 1892 in the works of the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans . In France he established himself through the novel La Garçonne by Victor Margueritte from 1922, which in German is called Die Aussteigerin . The main character in this novel wears short hair and simple, masculine clothing and maintains sexual relations with both sexes. The Garçonne of Margueritte is a modern, emancipated woman type of post-war period and has "a lot in common with the troubled war veterans who numb themselves because of their personal shock with sex and drugs." Margueritte's novel was highly controversial in France and a film adaptation from 1923 was not released there. Even before that, the term Garçonne was a synonym for a lesbian woman in Parisian society , but it had more positive connotations than other, derogatory terms. The best- known representative of a Garçonne was the athlete Violette Morris in the interwar period .

As a synonym for a lesbian woman, the term was also included in the German lesbian movement of the Weimar Republic . The influential lesbian magazine Frauenliebe was published under the title Garçonne from 1930 until it was banned in 1933 , and in 1931 Susi Wannowsky founded the Garçonne lesbian bar on Kalckreuthstrasse in Berlin. Here the style was at the same time charged with classism: While the Garçonne as a masculine type of woman was mainly received by lesbian women of the middle and upper class, the analogue of women of the lower class was the much more robust type of the “virile woman”, which was later used in the “ Butch ”returned.

The term Garçonne was subsequently picked up in the fashion world. Already in the illustrations by Kees van Dongen , the Garçonne was largely freed from any claim to emancipation . For designers such as Paul Poiret and Coco Chanel , she became a symbol of the fashionable woman with “cheveux á la garçonne” ( bob haired head ) and clothes without corsets , other accessories were men's hats, ties and monocles . “The Garçonne stands for consumption, success, mobility, as the advertising graphics showing a woman with short hair at the wheel of a car are testament to.” In the English-speaking world, the corresponding term flapper for modern, self-confident women was born in the 1920s however, the explicit masculine paint was missing. In the German-speaking world, the actress Marlene Dietrich corresponded to the type of Garçonne , which was also used as a term in the film world.

Since the 1970s, fashion designers have been using the terms Garçonne or à la Garçonne to characterize masculine-looking fashion for women. This trend was triggered by Yves Saint Laurent , who created a tuxedo for women in 1975 .

literature

  • Julia Drost: La Garconne. Changes in a literary figure (=  results of women's and gender studies at the Free University of Berlin ). Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-89244-681-1 .

Web links

Commons : Garçonne  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Stefanie Hartmann: Rebel and fashion icon of the 20s - Julia Drost's "La Garçonne. Changes in a literary figure". In: literaturkritik.de. October 1, 2004, accessed April 23, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Ilse Kokula : Lesbian life from Weimar to the post-war period In: Berlin Museum (Hrsg.): Eldorado. Homosexual women and men in Berlin 1850–1950. , 1984, ISBN 3-88725-068-0 , p. 149
  3. ^ Smoking, exercising and monocles. In: stern.de . February 12, 2008, accessed April 23, 2020 .
  4. ^ Garçonne - Lexicon of film terms. In: filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de. Retrieved April 23, 2020 .
  5. ↑ "Yves Saint Laurent gave women power". In: vogue.de. March 14, 2017, accessed April 23, 2020 .