Most fashion students naturally embrace a level of gender nonconformity.
Already equipped with a counterculture rebelliousness, they are taught to
decode garments and approach dressing as an extension of their
creativity.Their favorite designers have dealt in androgyny for decades:
Ann Demeulemeester, Jean Paul Gaultier, Giorgio Armani…At the heart of
the flapper frenzy Coco Chanel dressed women in slacks made from tricot
knits previously used in men’s underwear; Marlene Dietrich in her dapper
top hat and tails worn with glamourous pencilled eyebrows is still a source
of inspiration.
Clashes, collisions, juxtaposition, they’re what makes the fashion world
tick. This meets that, hard meets soft, girly meets masculine, sporty meets
chic, city meets desert…Two distinct entities are mashed together.
Separately, they are easily understood; together they become something new,
yet familiar. But in this era of gender-fluidity, male meets female, and
all is no longer so clear-cut.
‘Gender fluidity is everywhere’
I hear the phrase “I want my clothes to be unisex” from my students.
Traditionally we would correct the student who had clearly misunderstood
and meant “androgynous.” Men and women can’t wear the same clothes, we
would counsel. Items need to be cut differently to translate to the female
form. Breasts and hips must be considered in the fit of the garment. Women
button right over left; men button left over right. Chastened, the student
would settle for androgynous and we, smug in our knowledge, would think no
more about it.
But now this knowledge must be under question. Girls already buy “boyfriend
jeans” at J Crew, boys touch up their make-up in the bathroom between
classes. Gender fluidity is everywhere, heralding a playbook of new codes
that in the hands of the fashion student will become even more fluid:
Transgender, intersex, gender nonconforming, agender, bigender,
cisgendered, gender queer…
It leaves the centuries-old retail pillars of menswear and womenswear on
shaky ground. As instructors we could always fall back on the marketability
of unisex clothing. Where will you sell it? It’s too niche. There isn’t a
customer base. Even Hedi Slimane in the early 00s, upon discovering that
his skinny Dior Menswear suits were being worn by women, reportedly had
them tweaked to suit the female body.
If we question it, women buttoning their shirts differently than men is an
archaic practice. Furthermore cavemen didn’t dress their cavebabies in
either pink or blue. Throughout the ages, the human race has accumulated a
databank of codes and they are currently being dismantled. Couture designer
Rad Hourani created an entirely genderless collection shown during Paris
Haute Couture week with masks covering the models’ faces so that viewers
could not impose any preconceptions on the garments.
‘The human race has accumulated a databank of codes and they are
currently being dismantled’
Last month, Selfridges in London carved out a section on both their men’s
and women’s floors for their new “Agender” retail concept in which they
sell items that can be worn by either him or her, from labels like Comme
Des Garcons and Rick Owens. A smattering of pioneering American high
schools have introduced a policy where students struggling to accept the
gender they were assigned at birth are permitted to select the restroom
they wish to use based on how they identify.
If we fast forward further, will we soon shop in gender fluid retailers
where frills and pin stripes are simply ways to decorate oneself, where
dressing will be a form of free association that rejects all classification
of “girl” clothes or “boy” clothes, driven simply by an uncensored
curiosity, void of any assumptions? I don’t imagine it will be called
unisex as that already sounds outmoded. Many young influencers are
directing us that way.
Musician Grimes says, “I vibe in a gender neutral space so I’m kind of
impartial to pronouns of myself. I wish I didn’t have to be categorized.”
Indeed the younger the advocate, the more resonant the message. Actor Will
Smith’s 16-year-old son, Jaden, recently captioned a photo of himself
wearing a dress with the words, “Went to TopShop to buy some girl clothes,
I mean ‘clothes.’”
Could this blossoming egalitarianism lead to a radical change in how the
industry fits, sizes, labels, and markets clothes? As the highly
anticipated New York Menswear fashion week approaches, I wonder if separate
shows might become redundant, or even politically incorrect, in the
not-too-distant future. Gender fluidity might even usher in the look of our
time that we’ve been trying so desperately to define since the turn of the
millennium with little result. At the very least it might finally drag
women away from this boob-and-butt buffet of overworked spandex that we’ve
been force fed; this phenomenon of bloated femininity that makes me think
of geese that will end up as foie gras.
‘Gender fluidity might even usher in the look of our time’
There are other ways this new freedom can lead to complications in the
classroom. I was invited to guest-critique a class, and the appearance of
one student gave me no clue to whether they identified as female or male.
Their name was ambiguous. The student was clearly transitioning, but that’s
all I could ascertain. Mid-critique I used the pronoun “she” and I could
see a flicker of disappointment in their eyes that stayed with me the rest
of the day.
It can be confusing for all of us but not least those who are questioning
their identity, and we as instructors don’t want to contribute to their
anxiety. Yet when all codes are removed and our language has not caught up,
we might find ourselves ill-fitting.
So as instructors we could keep in mind these words from
zeitgeist-whisperer, Hedi Slimane, which seem as correct now as the
sleek-hipped cut of his trouser was then: “With anything you do, it’s very
important to try to understand the time you are living in, to be a part of
the present. I always just try to know the spirit of the time.”
By contributing guest editor Jackie Mallon, who is on the teaching
faculty of several NYC fashion programmes and is the author of Silk for the
Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.
