Thoroughly Reading a Men’s Catalog, Making No Purchases
Like Marti Muth — my high school English teacher who slid a copy of “The Normal Heart” across my desk in 1986 and said “Read this” — International Male knew I was gay before I did.
My closeted teen behind devoured the company’s men's wear catalog when it landed in my family’s mailbox in the 1980s. I was drawn to the fanciful clothing — things like rope-yarn tops and peekaboo rower shorts — that were a universe removed from my fat boy pants.
Page through a copy of the catalog today and the clothes look queerly masculine, like something Lil Nas X would drape from his body.
According to the new documentary “All Man: The International Male Story,” available on streaming services, I wasn’t alone. Through interviews with celebrity fans, catalog models, company employees and Gene Burkard, the company’s gay founder, the film explores how for some 40 years a catalog of outré men's wear became a generation-defining gay chef d’oeuvre.
