The Pseudo-Sexuality Of Fashion’s Crotch Fixation

The best way to picture how fashion designates “It” erogenous zones is to imagine a game of Operation. Every season or so, a different body part we’re meant to highlight with clothes (or a lack thereof) “lights up”: backs, bums, and, most recently, big boobs. But this Autumn/Winter 2024 season, a few designers directed our eyes downward to a different area — one that’s the most suggestive of all.

At Vivienne Westwood, male and female models alike walked the runway in codpieces-cum-jockstraps styled over pants or with windbreakers tucked in — or with nothing underneath. (Designer Andreas Kronthaler said he was referencing the 1600s and sports-protection gear.) Meanwhile, at Courrèges, the slit pockets of skirts and trench coats were positioned front and center so that, when a hand is inserted, the wearer appears to be really feeling themselves. And earlier this month in London, Dimitra Petsa posted a video demonstrating her own “masturbation pockets,” in which models can be seen with their fingers slid into the triangular panels placed on the crotches of denim and leather trousers.

Aside from the requisite pearl-clutching online, a popular take is that these crotch-fixated looks, in particular the autoerotic ones, represent female empowerment. (And perhaps a type of equality when you think about how women can now also look like they’re adjusting themselves in public.) But what’s more interesting to me is that these pieces are selling a facsimile of sex in a time when young people are famously squeamish about getting it on. By displacing the idea of self-pleasure (or even the nether regions themselves) to an outer layer of fabric, we simultaneously remove ourselves from the body beneath while drawing attention to it. In a way, this brand of arm’s-length sexuality is spot-on for the current clime, where we’ll put on our most daring outfits to post a pic — but then never actually wear them out in the environments that present opportunities for attraction (and acting on it).

That’s also why I’d be floored to find out photography, editorial or amateur, wasn’t a top consideration in the design of these explicit-but-not garments. Just think of the social media possibilities in which what might once have been a rose or a cig (or a condom) clenched between the toes of a Margiela Tabi… now lovingly tucked into a masturbation pocket. It’s not porn, but it kind of, sort of, alludes to it — and in 2024, that seems to be enough.