Dress for Success:
the Hypermale guide to situational fashion
A gender is a durable thing, and I have always believed that the key to living as a hypermale is learning how to dress appropriately for literally any possible situations in line with the values and fashion of our movement.
It's validly possible by design to be anything you want to be in the hypermale gender, and we have built in clines for all kinds of sensibilities for anything from Jock to Femmeboi, Scallies to Ska Punks.
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| Many hypers love himbo pink and sexy gymwear. |
Urban or Rural, Country or City, strictly cisgendered or wildly swinging gender fluid, there's a place for YOU in our movement that's consistent with our commitment to pluralism. Conservative, liberal, activist or homebody, everyone is welcome to try out Hyperdrag in a way that works for YOU.
The all-masc gym bull is every bit as much a "himbo" as the more gender-queer pink car and pink hair type, but you could easily imagine them sharing a gym and doing IQ Reduction Hypnosis together, or even being hyper-heterosexual one on one while being gym bros and gay in the outside world together. All kinds of otherwise impossible things become routine in the world of hypermale on hypermale relationships.
For my own part, I can say that my marriage drastically improved from my change in gender norms and the more deferential and craft ortiented norms of being a hyper make cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the house much less gender-inappropriate. And give me an incentive to unload unwanted tasks as "men's work" better suited to my more level headed and paperwork oriented husband.
Our founders want this system to be built to last, so it's designed with a time locked element calling back to it's era of creation (basically Summer 2019 through Winter 2021) that can be ever-fresh by mixing with current styles, classic by mixing with timeless choices, retrofuturistic styles reminiscent of cosplay, or even era drag your past self's and friends and family fashion choices.
Transformation is all about the individual involved and anyone in the hypermale or hyperfemale movements should be aware of some basic principles:
1… Common Hyper
Common hyper is an agreed upon set of diverse patterns and techniques that can be used to
distinguish yourself *as a hyper* or *as a hyper chaser* with a degree of cover.
Tie dying, bleaching, and painting
Jackson Pollack patterns
Static knits and embroidered threads
Camouflage in wild colors (sky, autumn, purple) or
monochrome (urban, anthracite, night)
Bold prints and patterns
Big logos, names or symbols
Repeating patterns of personal symbols.
Gaultier cuts, straps, and netting
High visibility elements like shiny paint, gold/silver threading, holographic iron on, etc.
Revealing necklines, exposed bellies, etc.
Callbacks to media commonly used I'm hypermale conversion.
Typically the more orthodox members put the hyper print/dye/bleach in the monochrome part
of their outfit, while the more experimental put the hyper stuff in the color areas.
For reference, a few common hyper classics:
Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, and other Phillip. K. Dick inspired films/TV
Matrix, Cloud Atlas, and Sense 8 along with other Wachowski works.
The Fifth Element, Barbarella, Valerian, Demolition Man and other high-fashion Sci fi looks.
Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hadestown, Repo: A Genetic Opera, American Idiot, Purple Rain, and other interactive musicals
90s cyberpunk styles out of Johnny Mnemonic, Virtuosity, Strange Days…
- 80s-90s Paul Verhoven Sci-Fi styles.
X-MEN and Back to the Future series.
Altered Carbon, both books and film.
Dark City, Blue Velvet, The 13th Floor and other "period mix look" films.
High fashion modern dress clasics / Shakespeare adaptations like
Baz Luhrmans "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge",
David Tennants "Hamlet", modernized Richard III with Ian McClellan,
Ralph Finnes "Coriolanus" or the 90s "Midsummer Night's Dream";
mixed up with period accurate Kennith Branagh looks from "author name" + title works
(Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, etc.)
Hyperdrag is your own personal gender,
exactly as flashy as you want it to be in the moment,
and you can dial it up and down almost at will....
Typically a series of small, budgeted shopping sprees grows the hypermale part of an ex-guys
closet in fits and starts. Rep brands, bands, TV and Movies YOU like along with callbacks to your
favorite science fiction, fetishist, and cosplay outfits; but pick things in hyperish patterns or things
that could easily be treated later.
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| There's a certain huxterisim about me that I love how this shirt captures. |
2… Continuity of Self
If you used to be a punk, goth, emo, metalhead, or even a "trenchcoat and fedora" type,
pull out your OWN old gear and start working it in.
Also call back to the long abandoned looks and properties associated with ur parents, longtime friends,
high school and college scene to shout out your own personal heroes and the lifelong passions they inspired,
like the leathers my first slave gave me in my fatter days or my own lifelong love of tie dye
and bleach craft.
Typically a series of small, budgeted shopping sprees grows the hypermale part of an ex-guys closet in fits and starts. Rep brands, bands, TV and Movies YOU like along with callbacks to your favorite science fiction, fetishist, and cosplay outfits; but pick things in hyperish patterns or things that could easily be treated later.
See my Hypermale Facebook Group for a full post of my Vegas Fashion Haul. Yeah, I really DID spend $1200 at Ross, but I bought quality stuff, and I suggest you run out and get yourself some new duds before hypebeast styles go out of fashion.
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| I love to rock Nightmare on Elm St. II Jock /Coach looks. |
Often you can personalize common hyper by choosing to emulate favorite characters:
some of us wanna be Cameron Dallas, others Jean Baptiste Emanuel Zorg,
or Ruby Rod or even LeeLu herself. Some people wanna be Gambit,
others prefer Storm or Phoenix. Drawing inspiration from the common part of the
culture and making it your own makes it liberating and personal to you in a way that
simply having everyone be a "2015 Marty McFly jr clone" wouldn't.
As you grow bolder and more committed, start hypering up older pieces with an
arts and crafts mentality: adding tie dying, bleaching, paint spots, cut holes, straps
and epaulets to give "classic you" pieces a permanent hypermale makeover along
with some of the new gear that was chosen for adaptation.
3… Fly Your OWN Flag
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| Nonbinary flag (unofficial hyper default) |
Part of being hyper is PRIDE and being SELF AWARE. Gay and Trans culture have handily provided
a system of flags that can be drawn upon to express the diversity within the movement.
Emulate the color and pattern schemes of relevant flags, then use the ensign as inspiration
for accessories. Conveniently many flags share Black/White/Blue or Purple, so it's possible to "flag drag"
by switching from say, yellow to red accessories as you add leather, or adding yellow
to an "asexual" coded outfit to suddenly switch flags to "nonbinary" as you feel sexier again.
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| I also sometimes flag leather or rubber |
Some hypers have more gender and sexual orientation flexibility than others,
so if you are less into gender bending you can use leather, bear, twink, rubber,
and pup pride flag inspiration to express fetishist affiliation; Gay, Straight, Bisexual,
Pansexual, Polyamory, Trans, etc flag colors for sexual orientation; or Demi-boy,
Pangenger, Nonbinary, Genderqueer or Genderfluid flag colors and patterns for
gender flexibility. Again, you can flag-drag these things back and forth such that
demi-boy and demi-girl might alternate by changing scarves and hats.
Likewise, country/state/provence/city flag inspired looks from your own and admired cultures.
Whether you are from Colorado, Missouri, or Arizona; or British Columbia or Quebec…
find the symbology and colors of your favorite flags and build your look around the color schemes
and traditional vs modern looks for the places you come from or love; and drag em back and forth
with your national flag colors, or your gender/sexuality flag colors instead (New Mexico, Rubber,
non-binary, and Gender Fluid, perhaps? Magnolia in hair + Missouri-flag colors, = gender-fluid
and bisexual, though you could swap to Ace or Nonbinary at a whim with an accessory change)
Religious symbols from your own religion; recovery movement stuff, etc. Hyper is a pluralist movement and we love being political and dressing provocatively to create conversation around teams, causes, favorite artists and media properties. And all store shopping these things leads to very interesting hyperdrag possibilities like running to the bathroom to take off sweats and coming back with both a different team and a different gender for the next game!
4… Ethic pride and Cultural Appropriation
Be who you are, admire who you admire. If you wanna rock a Sari, Kilt, Dashiki, kente cloth. Kimono, or even an outright Hijab or Burka GO FOR IT. We are proud of our diversity and love to mix and match our pride gear to rep friends, influences, etc. And hyperfamily values include a degree of deference to your elders tastes.
Using old photos, I can create a callback look on stage to represent a dear friend who I used to be married to; or wear cherry blossom out of season to celebrate this very special spring moment with Trent.
#StPatricksDayAtHome quick change leather miniskirt reveal pic.twitter.com/Z2JyByJg4d
— Vast Country Hypnosis (@VastHypno) March 18, 2021
Of course, it's not cultural appropriation at all if it's your OWN culture you're riffing off of, so often flying your own flag is enough to erase the charge entirely. Plus, majority cultures tend to have much more imperialist tendencies and view it as assimilation, rather than appropriation.
5… All Weather hyper
You need to be able to cheer your sports teams, go to work, party, hit the club,
be around friends and family who know you, attend formal events like Weddings and funerals,
and all the other activities in your life while continuing to live your chosen gender and dress
your present mood.
Some hypers swing male-hypermale, others prefer a femme look element in the mix at times
and a masc look at other times. Just OWN it in a self aware way: you know yourself,
and you can hyper up anything from frumpy to casual to fabulous according to how you feel in
the moment through the principles on this page.
Be as sexy or unsexy as you FEEL in the moment, or as visible or invisible about it as you like.
It's ALL valid!
The Hypermale gender is a toy for you to make your own and play with however you like.
Half Dragging
Hypermale looks are based in the principles of old school drag culture, long since abandoned by the modern gay and trans movement.
We view it as our privilege to pick up the torch of what others have discarded:
80s feminist power suits
30s and 50s half drag culture
70s-80s drag scene sleaze
Old school stripper and porno looks
90s club kids, 70s disco…
Have fun with using the built-in clines between styles, eras, and fan cultures to use the built-in cloak-and-reveal nature of half dragging to provide invisibility when you want it, paired with a dramatic reveal to high visibility when *that's* what you want; or the exact opposite if *that's* what the situation requires instead.
History of Half Dragging
Hyper drag customs are done in self conscious imitation of the customs of earlier eras, and because of this it's necessary to learn a little bit about the history of half dragging. Our gay and trans ancestors of the mid 20th century lived in a world where having that kind of identity was very dangerous and had to be hidden. This necessitated a lot of customs that prevailed throughout the 1930s, faded into the background during and just after WWII and then had a resurgence throughout the 50s before the feminist movement of the early 1960s finally rendered the world safe for open expression of identity.
If you watch older films from the Hayes Code Era, you will notice that characters are often marked as gay through costuming: like Marlene Dietrich's famous passion for menswear. Homosexual men of the era often wore cultural markers like pencil thin mustaches, the ascot or a silk pocket square to mark a gay identity, while Trans folk would often incorporate a single item of matching opposite gender clothing like an angora sweater, blouse, or women's scarf mixed into a basically male wardrobe, which expanded to women's cut pants as female fashion became more open to pants over time.
When mixed into a layered look, this allowed for a conceal/reveal system where signals could be hidden under a jacket or sweater, only to be revealed again in a safer environment. Though the 2020s is a markedly more tolerant era when it comes to gender and sexual identity, the issue of being a new movement, the safety of our members, and the gender norms of the hypermale gender all conspire to make half dragging unusually suitable for us.
Half Dragging Principles
A basic grasp of the principles of half dragging is necessary for almost anyone trying for a hypermale look. The general idea is to use layers of different identities and use them to reveal or conceal yourself as you change environments and moods.
For example, a good jacket collection might feature several different men's and women's styles of leather and denim jacket. Various sweatshirts, sweaters, and sleeveless hoods for "hood layers" can be helpful. As can a collection of wild leggings, yoga pants, and other high visibility items that can be alternated with lower visibility, more traditional, and subtler pieces for invisibility in unwelcoming environments or subtler moods.
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| St Patrick's Day clothing layout |
By dressing in layers, you can use overshirts, sweaters, and jackets like a cloak of invisibility for wilder gear underneath; or start out in a wild over layer that gets removed to reveal a lower visibility layer underneath when that's appropriate for the situation. Many smaller accessories can be carried with you in cargo pockets, sporrans, fanny packs, or even kept in a backpack or car so as to entirely change your look between masc/femme/hyper or high/low visibility situations on the fly simply by accessorizing differently from prechosen accessories like pins, scarves, pocket squares, and hats.
Personalization through Era Dragging vs Time Locked.
The time locked nature of hypermale patterns and drag systems gives the perfect opportunity for versatility and self expression through mixing 2020-2021 "pandemic era" styles with the styles of other eras.
Since visions of the future often say more about the eras they come from than the ones they claim to represent, you don't necessarily have to stick to the cyberpunk roots: it's totally possible to hyper up Steampunk, Gothic, Art Deco futuristic, Dieselpunk, along with the more traditional 80s-90s Cassettepunk and gamery ShadowRun, Cyberpunk 2077 and Hypebeast styles that reflect the founding conditions of the movement.
Ape YOUR OWN favorite characters from sci-fi of other eras, whether that's "Things to Come" 30s futuristic or swinging early 70s "Barbarella" and you still fit in fine because our founders loved era-mix Sci fi like Dark City and ExiStenZ.
Of course, it's all about you, so era dragging prominently abandoned old logos (Mobil's "Flying Red Horse", Commodore, Atari, Pan-Am), vintage product gear (Commodore 64, 1999 iMac, etc.) Abandoned school and sports team logos and uniforms, or even futuristic hypothetical designs all fit well with the hyperish taste for big bold logos and prints made custom after the fact.
So is stuff you and your friends used to wear when younger, stuff your parents wore in their own youth or your childhood, and cosplay inspired takes on your favorite eras of changeable media figures like David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince, The Who and Elton John are also quite legitimate ways to era drag while flying your own flag.
Culture and Subculture Dragging
More mature folx might well appreciate the ease of shifting from business, to lunchtime cocktails with coworkers, back to business, and out in a single outfit with an easy transition from happy hour to nightlife for similar reasons. Or likewise being able to flag a recovery look in the meeting, then walk out looking "urban streatwear" and head straight to a kink-friendly space for a "suddenly Nonbinary" big reveal or a meeting of a more gender-inclusive program after.
Situational Dressing 
Success with fashion is entirely contingent on situational fashion. Hypermale gender norms are to dress appropriately for the environment, weather, and social situation that you are expecting to be in, then vary those situational looks to accommodate the tolerances of the people present and their own gender identities using the principles of half dragging to provide adaptability through changing layers and accessories as you pass through different environments and social situations. A few common examples follow.
Hypermale Gymwear
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| Himbofication is common hyper hypno |
The layered look also mixes well with gym culture, loving tracksuits, sweatpants, sweaters, branded jackets and fan culture / fetishist culture elements. It's validly possible to be an Adidas scally and still gender bend gym wear and pick hyper print.
Lots of sports fan gear is available in both sexes and many smaller adults can often wear youth sizes as well. Hypermale prints and knits with sports teams logos, low cut girls sports merch, long jerseys with yoga pants, men's logo tracksuits in wild patterns are all commonly available to produce a huge diversity of sporty looks suitable for both gym, game, and home use.
Hypermale Formal
A side effect of America getting less and less formal over the course of the 20th century is that many half dragging techniques are naturally well suited to formal environments like weddings, funerals, balls, and fundraisers, as well as the industries where people are still doing traditional suit and tie businesswear.
In the office or on a formal occasion, try mixing in ladies pantsuit pants with a slim cut 80s-90s retro suit jacket and a hyper print tie or ascot; or conversely mixing a woman's "Power Suit" jacket w/ big shoulder pads with matching men's suit pants and shoes, or wearing a frilly or lace up shirt under a sports coat. Hypermale print ascots, pocket handkerchiefs, and pocket watch / wallet chains all make good hypermale flagging identifiers which can pass easily for fashion accessories.
Hypermale Fashionable 
People who work in trendy industries like tech, media and the party and event industry have a bit more latitude to mix it up In their attire. In this kind of environment, high visibility elements like sequins and rhinestones can mix with technology accessories like smart watches, fitbits, AR glasses, and aura rings. Techie looking patterns, logos for technology gear and futuristic styles are commonplace.
In more fashionable environments, large bold printed jackets can mix with more traditional suit pants and ladies section tops, collarless shirts and patterned pants.
Indochino makes a wide selection of printed and jacquard fabric customized suits, often with silver and gold embroidered thread work. Many other fashionable looks can be found in the present market. The gender privilege of shopping the whole store is pretty significant for expanding fashion options.
Business Casual
Old school advice about business fashion applies: dress for the job you want, not the one you have. Ideally be just a little more fashion forward than the office norm but also somewhat more traditional in other ways. Try dressing one notch up from your present position, or use the old school brown nosing tactic of emulating your HR guy, immediate supervisor or THEIR bosses.
Be lawerly with the dress code:
Dress codes are written by people and they have values too. Many companies have official policies written in usually uselessly gender neutral language like "skirts, shorts, blouses and shirts must be business appropriate" on the assumption that people sort out the identity themselves.
Likewise, many more conservative and traditional policy writers often provide alternative pairs on the blind assumption that literally everyone is straight and cisgender, leading to a marvelously exploitable ambiguity of simply having failed to consider the possibility of diversity at all.
This allows the more genderqueer among us to point to the language and say "it only says 'business appropriate blouse' [points] and I did get it from the traditional section." And he has a decent shot at opening up the policy for everyone, or at least clarifying it officially such that people at least know what is forbidden. The whole company benefits when someone chooses to be the guy who they clarified the policy for.
Use your knowledge of the organization:
Most anyone who has been a long-term employee or student at a place knows the local office culture and the people in it well enough to deduce the key questions: "Who wrote the policy? Who was it written to please? Who necessitated it and through what behavior?" Once you have figured these things out, it's relatively easy to play the prejudices of those individuals and/or notice that the original complainers / troublemakers are long gone or have since changed their ways.
Many liberal companies have preexisting diversity policies that were designed to accommodate our feminist, gay, and trans ancestors which can also be used to accommodate us. Likewise many conservative workplaces have religious freedom policies, sports gear tolerance, and sometimes even a degree of tolerance for school/fraternity pride gear.
And you can always lean on "Company Pride" by whole store shopping the company store, supporting employee sports teams, or era dragging old products and logos that made your company's brand pretty much anywhere you work.
Likewise there's school and event dress codes that can also be "lawered" in a manner consistent with their own values and ours: school / fraternity pride, dragging the various cliques of your own school or event culture, and imitation of prominent members are all good tactics for this kind of situation too.
Break the rules by following them:
It's remarkably difficult to enforce rules on you when you can validly claim to be within the letter and spirit of existing policy. First and foremost, you simply fail to get noticed at all or are outright perceived to be "within standards" even when gender bending or reppin vintage stuff. Secondly, even when you do get attention, it's often perceived as having "school spirit", "company pride", or a "team player" attitude paired with a unique sense of style and being fashionable about it helps you a lot.
So does the fact that almost nobody complains about folks who aspirationally dress above their station, or go above and beyond the call of duty to please the boss / teacher / organizer by repping HIS/HER own favorite properties in the mix of your cosplay elements. These things tend to make people love and value your look, rather than complain about it, even when your favorite is involved instead of theirs.
This works even better with stylish cosplay-friendly artists like Elton John, Prince, David Bowie, Madonna, or even Lady Gaga with a younger and hipper or gay boss. Including your bosses, co-workers, and friends gets them in on your game and don't be suprised if your female friends start rocking "Stevie Nicks look" or "Madonna Look" stuff in your honor.
Self Expression Elements
Half of hypermale is common hyper, the other half is self expression,
I got my husband a Bad Dragon T-shirt to match his love of their products, call our our common religion of Satanisim, and provide a tribute to the fact that my own personal demon identifies as a dragon who is black with red accents as depicted on the T-shirt.
There's typically a love of favorite colors,
memorable outfits from favorite films,
long abandoned past personal style choices
returning like returning to past favorite brands.
and then slowly eliminating the older and less desirable pieces
from his old stuff and replacing it with versatile common hyper
pieces at first then adding flashier and draggier elements
as comfort levels improve; as I'm doing here with a very hyper
static style "Suicide Squad" call out of Jared Leto's Joker,
mixed with my old leather jacket and Camo Pants
or hyper sweats.
Or conversely a my himbo pink sweats and I have an instant Harley Quinn look with my shiny leopard print holographic raincoat.
This often leads to a pattern of saving up for small budgeted shopping sprees over time
to build your wardrobe as fashions come in and out of season, paired with a constant grooming
out of the less popular/compatible items mixed with seasonal storage for items that work
for Spring / Summer / Fall / Winter and their associated holidays.
Arts and Crafts with Attitude
Hypermen are proud to be free from gender norms about being crafty with tie dying and bleaching, we love to sew on epaulets and straps, press spikes into leather and bedazzle our clothes. Cut sleeves off shirts, and windows for showing skin, add hi viz paint and tape, sew on and iron on patches, and other crafty ways are useful skills for the drag, and I personally expect that to become the gender norms of the community.
Luckily our gay and trans ancestors have made many useful sewing instructional videos geared towards explicitly nonbinary, trans, drag queen, and showy gay styles that many patterns and sew along videos by suitable role models already exist and are geared towards the kind of fashion we like.
Just watch this goddess in action and watch what she can do with a needle and thread! You'll find yourself inspired to sew little rainbows into your hems or make custom sparkly epaulet covers. Cutting, sewing, ironing-on, hemming, lowering necklines, adding netting all make easy sewing projects to make any store bought fashion piece both uniquely your own and distinctively common hyper at the same time.
Ethnic Pride
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| There's nothing wrong with repping Norse Paganism, lots of Caucasian people have Viking ancestery! |
Hypermen are proud of their heritage and diversity, and I foresee a culture of mixing ethnic pride elements, like kilts, hijabs, saris, Dashikis and kimonos into layers of their drag, or conversely by appropriation of elements of admired cultures (particularly of Asian cultures and their traditional and modern elements. ) and subtly mixing traditional and futuristic elements.
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| My Son Trent loves to call out his Asian ancestry with cherry blossoms, japanese hokusai prints, anime references, and chinese characters. |
If you want to dress hypermale in rasta colors, it's easy enough to pull off a tie die red/black/green or Green/yellow/black spots and black+white common hyper look, add dreadlocks and you are good.
Subculture Mixing
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| Punk Faggot and Fetish Punk are both free hypnosis. |
Mohawks, dyed hair in wild colors, bodymod, this is a gender that is openly kinky and self awareness is a part of the brand: mixing kilts and leather miniskirts with hypermale print men's shirts; sexy ladies tops with bleachers and camo…
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| Metalheads and masc drag are valid hypermale too... |
The gender bending goes on and on pic.twitter.com/P2o63oYzbS
— Vast Country Hypnosis (@VastHypno) March 18, 2021
Likewise there's room for hip hop culture, urban streatwear mixed-up with futuristic styles and anime references. A gender can accommodate any kind of person.
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| Many hypers deliberately addict themselves to hypnosis with my files. |
Fandom Culture
Whether it's rocking a long Dr. Who scarf, getting Morpheus' trenchcoat, making Logan's bathrobe from Logans Run, or wearing a bajoran style earring, it's always fun to add an element of Sci-fi Fandom to your drag. We love chunky razor cut beards, pointy sideburns, chunky Bluetooth headsets, retrofuturistic old technology accessories… go ahead, get the clear raincoat from Blade Runner if you want to, it's *fabulous* baby!
Hell you can even do a fabulous "Farah Fawcett in Saturn 3" future-femme look or ape Morpheus' purple suit from the famous "Red Pill, Blue Pill" scene paired with the Merovingian's ornate embroidered vest!
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| Don't be suprised to see me casting in Dr. Strange gear... |