~DEVENDRA BANHART/The New York Times Style Magazine

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DEVENDRA BANHART & his back-up tour band: HAIRY FAIRY appeared in an amazing photo shoot in the MEN’S FASHION SPRING 2006 issue of: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE – titled:

‘GENDER TROUBLE’ – “IT’S A BOY. IT’S A GIRL. IT’S ANDROGYNY. DAPHNE MERKIN PEEKS UNDER THE SKIRT OF FASHION’S LATEST PASSION.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: JEAN-BAPTISTE MONDINO

all images scanned from: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE – MEN’S FASHION SPRING 2006.

some quotes from the text by DAPHNE MERKIN:
“Gender, as anyone who has sipped at the supremely relativizing potion of postmodernist theory has come to understand, is a fragile construct, wobbling atop its binary foundation. ….
“whether he (Banhart) is dressed in a regulation suit and tie offset only with a brooch and a bracelet, or decked out in flowing robes accessorized with strands of oversize beads, there is something about his presence, as there is about the rest of his languishing tribe, that subverts our cruder epectations of what it means to be feminine or masculine. Perhaps it’s only that they give those of us who sedulously avoid the taint of transgression in our own more workaday performances pause to reflect on the endless mystery of gender.
“Might it be more of a floating signifier than a fixed set of attributes?
“And are we, in the end, only as blue or pink as we feel?”