Genderless fashion, is by no means, a new phenomenon. It saw it’s germination quite a while ago when Yves Saint Laurent put women in tuxedos back in 1966, or better yet, when Coco Chanel defied carefully constructed gender norms and went horseback riding in a pair of trousers. Earlier instances of genderless fashion include Coco Chanel taking jersey, a fabric traditionally used in men’s underwear at that time and using it in loose-fitting silhouettes to make dresses for women. In 1984, Jean Paul Gaultier put a man in a skirt. Mick Jagger of Rolling Stones, took the audacious approach to perform in a ‘white man’s dress’ during a concert at Hyde Park at London in 1969, which today, would no longer be considered that audacious. The question further boils down to, why should it be?
The assumption that gender has to be binary is a long-held myth. In a talk by Business of Fashion, Pediatric Endocrinologist, Dr. Shazhan Amed, sheds light upon the nuances of gender, genetic sex and biological sex. Soon, it becomes crystal clear that gender and sex assigned at birth are not two sides of the same coin. In a world where people identifying with different gender identities exist, gender at the end of the day, is a spectrum. When there are such varied gender identities, the individual gender expressions emanating from these need to find a space in this world. This is where Fashion comes in. Forming an integral part of expression, it no longer merely entails clothing to cover our backs with, but a way to express our many idiosyncrasies. It is then, a vehicle to propel gender acceptance forward.
In the recent past, genderless fashion has gained significant momentum. It is no longer solely about androgyny but about blurring the lines between the binary gender identities of male and female. Take, for instance, a recent milestone. Alok Vaid Menon, a renowned, gender non-conforming artist, writer, educator and entertainer, partnered with technical designer Adrianne last year to design their first fashion collection. They had already toured women’s sections of clothing stores, to find to their utter disappointment that none of the clothes fit their frame. Added to that was their realisation that transpeople aren’t represented in fashion campaigns enough. It’s cisgender people who often take the lead. The culmination of these epiphanies led them to design and shoot a collection, keeping starkly in mind, what they or other trans people would dress like on being devoid of the fear of facing violence.
On the global front, a groundbreaking moment was Rad Hourani’s Spring Summer 2015 Unisex Couture Collection, the first ever unisex couture collection. Rad Hourani is a proponent of neutrality and of a world unconstrained by norms. Alessandro Michele has showcased models of both genders wearing clothing from the same line since he took the reins as Gucci’s creative director in 2015.
2017 saw Louis Vuitton putting Jaden Smith in a skirt for a womenswear campaign. Vivienne Westwood’s Fall 2017 Menswear collection featured men donning gowns. These recent advents are however incomplete without the mention of the legendary designer, Thom Browne. In my opinion, he has epitomised sartorial rebellion with menswear embodying playfulness and theatricality. His 2018 spring/summer collection saw men wearing grey pleated skirts, exuding edginess like never before.
One might feel that it is a cakewalk for renowned international designers to showcase genderless fashion on the world’s runways which make for a pretty progressive platform, but in reality, the birth of any fashion revolution permeates the entire industry, trickling down to the everyday consumer, to you and to me.
High Street Fashion, for instance, welcomed the movement with Selfridges’ concept store, Agender. Spread across three floors, it allows customers to browse clothing by colour, fit and style instead of gender. The Selfridges Agender video commercial, an emotive fashion film, glorifies taking pride in one’s gender identity. Zara and H&M too launched genderless collections, namely ‘Ungendered’ and ‘Denim United’, bringing genderless clothing to the masses. Abercrombie and Fitch, with their unisex kids’ collection launched in 2018 further attempted to do away with gender constructs since a very young age.
Speaking about the spread of this movement, Roger Tedre, head of MA Fashion Communication at Central Saint Martins, and Former Editor-in-Chief of WGSN comments, ‘As others have pointed out, genderless, or gender-free, fashion is a movement, not a trend. It is a movement that I think will gather pace in the years ahead. I think we may see more shops in future like New York’s The Phluid Project. The response to this movement has been better than I had anticipated, with two of the largest international clothing retailers (Zara and H&M) releasing gender-free collections. Fashion brands are beginning to understand their power to help change the world for the better.’
Closer home, in India, gender acceptance witnessed a groundbreaking moment when consensual homosexual sex got decriminalised in September this year. Genderless labels such as Anaam, Kallol Datta and Huemn too have turned a blind eye to gender, while designing silhouettes. A reconstructed shirt without darts, contouring or button placements coding the garment as male or female, was a product of the designer Alan Alexander Keekal in a recent fashion event this year. Indian celebrities, like Ranveer Singh, have taken centre stage to normalise genderless dressing, while paving the way for a more accepting society by donning skirts to red carpet events.
Since time without beginning, any fashion movement which started out as a rebellion against regressive norms as morphed to become a part and parcel of daily life. One can see genderless fashion progressing towards that very direction. As said by Indian freelance fashion stylist, Kshitij Kankaria, in an interview with The Scroll, ‘If you walk into a men’s store and see a skirt, your mind gets used to it. Then when you see a man wearing it, it doesn’t seem so odd. In 20 years, maybe men wearing skirts and dresses will be like women wearing pants today.’
Sources for Quotes:
- Primary Source: Quote by Roger Tredre, Head of MA Fashion Communication at Central Saint Martins
- The Scroll( An Indian Publication): Quote by Indian Freelance Fashion Stylist, Kshitij Kankaria