[News/Arts] [UK] Like the chevalier, we are all cross-dressers now

[Stephanie Stevens]

London Evening Standard, UK


Like the chevalier, we are all cross-dressers now

Melanie McDonagh

07 June 2012


[Photo: Radical: the Chevalier defied social conventions]

As cross-dressers go, the Chevalier d’Eon doesn’t make an entirely
convincing woman. In the portrait that has just gone on show at the
National Portrait Gallery, the most famous transvestite of the 18th
century looks all too male and appears to have the shadow of a beard.
And his dress is disappointingly modest; he was trying to suck up to
the new French republican government so he has a white kerchief across
his bosom and a tricoloured ribbon in his hat. Comparing him and
Grayson Perry, you feel that cross-dressing has come a long way since
the advent of effective make-up.

Nonetheless, this purchase is largely of symbolic value, quite apart
from depicting a genuinely interesting historical figure who was once
a synonym for cross-dressing the way the Marquis de Sade was for
sadism. The National Portrait Gallery is keen on inclusivity and this
acquisition, an English copy of a French original, will make the
cross-dressers happy, because its photographs of Britain’s
contemporary cross-dressers, Eddie Izzard and Grayson Perry, do not,
disappointingly, show them in women’s clothes. As Lucy Peltz, curator
of 18th-century portraits, observes: “The Chevalier d’Eon was a figure
of international fame and notoriety … But it is his courage in
following his gender orientation in the face of the severest penalties
that make this portrait one of the most inspiring and fascinating
images.”

Well, certainly he was notorious. Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, he
spent the first half of his life a man, the second as a woman. Once a
stooge of Louis XV in his personal secret police, he was later part of
the French mission to the court of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. He
came to London in 1762 as part of the French mission, where he
assisted the king in drawing up plans for an invasion of England, and
blackmailed his own government in return for keeping those plans
secret. Part of the deal was that he should stick to women’s dress. He
enlivened London by fencing on stage in a dress: he was an
accomplished swordsman. And although there was a book opened on the
Stock Exchange to speculate on his sex, he was found, at death, to be
anatomically male, a revelation from which it reportedly took his
housekeeper hours to recover.

Frankly, you wonder why anyone bothered being a cross-dresser in the
18th century, when men as well as women played the peacocks with silks
and satins, lace and pastels. It was probably the corsets and skirts
that had appeal for the chevalier.

What’s interesting is the resonance this extraordinary figure has for
contemporary Londoners. In a sense, we’re all cross-dressers now, not
just the official transvestites. Women wear trousers, brogues and
men’s shirts without offence or controversy. And male fashion is going
through one of its flamboyant periods. “The boundaries have broken
down,” declares Tamasin Doe, former fashion editor of Instyle
magazine. “Anything goes.” And in particular, fashion for men this
season is conspicuous for bright colours, especially on tight
trousers, with white rather than black as the background colour for
suits. As for manbags, we’ve had them since Prada, 1999. It’s a happy
look, which says you don’t mind being noticed. The Chevalier lives on,
in a scaled-down, metrosexual way, in the bright trousers of the young
men on the Tube.


© 2012 ES London Limited

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