The Great Gender Blur
Fashion Comes Out of the Closet
The biggest trend of the season is unisex clothing — from gender-neutral styles and queer-chic, to this season’s collections and unisex shopping areas.
It’s an interesting shift for fashion. When we talk about androgynous fashion, we usually mean female-presenting people in outfits that incorporate or echo menswear. If women dress butch, queer or otherwise, it’s not necessarily because they want to be boys. They’re doing it because they don’t necessarily aspire to a supposed male ideal of what looks cute to men. But one seldom sees male-presenting people doing the same with womenswear, at least in the mainstream.
For me, it is a side effect of the privileging of traits, roles, and characteristics associated with masculinity against those associated with femininity. A woman in a masculine-associated role or clothing is believed to be empowered, moving towards higher status and greater social privilege, even if only implicitly. But a man in a feminine-associated role or clothing is considered disempowered, lower, and downright absurd. We associate women in menswear with freedom and assertion, and men in womenswear with deviation, parody and the grotesque. Men don’t aspire to dress like women. Heck! Women too don’t want men to dress like them. Isn’t that quite fucked up?
If we’re breaking down the gender codes, shouldn’t we then break it down all the way? Should we even worry about “masculinity” or “femininity”?
For decades, queer people across the world have used clothing, jewelry, slang and mannerisms to signal their presence to each other, especially when it wasn’t safe to be out. Language still conveys the message today, while pieces of clothing, specific styles, piercings, and hair length no longer are dependable cues about someone’s sexual orientation. What was once a queer-owned style has shifted to the mainstream, being appropriated to the point that it’s now impossible to infer sexual orientation from the way someone dresses. The lines between orientations are blurring.
However, the lines between the genders are stark. But I’m relieved to witness an as-yet fringe movement that is moving away from clothing the genders, to clothing people.
What gives me hope are designers like Rad Hourani and brands like Selfridges and their Agender collection. Inspired by gender-agnostic trends throughout fashion, and “transcending traditional notions of ‘his’ and ‘hers’”, their collection showcases the best genderless fashion from world-renowned labels and emerging designers. The most exciting part of their collection, for me, are the ambiguously gendered models.
There’s nothing more assuring than real-life queers with buzzed undercuts and body piercings, sporting kickass designs, body positivity, and diversity in their looks. They are really queering the way one wears a certain piece of clothing, creating their own designs so far beyond what convention prescribes.
I’m so tickled and thrilled by the concept of removing gender from fashion and how it affects everyone.
