“FASHION SHOULD BE GENDERLESS, HOW PEOPLE PERCEIVE THE IDEA OF BEAUTY CAN VARY FROM ONE TO ANOTHER”
ALESSANDRO MICHELE
(Italian fashion designer,Creative director of Gucci)
Fashion is a choice and it has always had a strong purpose of self-expression and liberation since a very long time. But for as long as fashion has existed as a set of seasons, fashion shows, and trends, it has worked under the assumption that gender exists in a binary. Every aspect of the fashion system is beholden to the segregated ideas of menswear and womenswear.
Today’s generation is slowly bringing in some changes, the consumers are changing and so are the designers. Young people, kids, teenagers and millennials are looking for styles that suits them as well as their attitude, they don’t mind if something is men’s or women’s at all. The younger generation is growing up in this world where they’re driven by what they like. And it’s a fact, A piece of fabric, a textile, a colour or a garment has no gender.
Established brands and designers have started realising that in today’s times, when people are interested in exploring their own gender identities, malls, retail shops and websites which separate everything according to gender and thus screams at them that there is this binary : You have to be this or you have to be that, you shop here and you shop there, it’s going to make a part of their consumers uncomfortable. So, few retailers, brands and designers are ready for this movement. Inhabit launched its first genderless collection last fall, Norma Kamali changed her storied brand to a unisex label last year, Umit Benan launched unisex line B+ and Equipment is launching a gender-fluid collection in spring 2020. Even global juggernauts like H&M and Zara have tried their hand at genderless collections, with the Denim United line and Ungendered collection, respectively.
There are retailers who are already operating in a genderless space. Browns led the way when it opened its Brown East Store in Shoreditch in 2017, with the entire space merchandised in a genderless model. The buying director Ida Petersson says that the chief reason to open a gender neutral store was data showing customers shopping across the two-gender divide. “It felt really right to put it forward as a more gender-neutral store where you take away some of that tension that some people have because they are stuck shopping in one section,” Petersson says.
The image of harry styles in a Gucci dress on Vogue’s December cover proved so controversial that it became an international news, but at its core, the dress debate highlighted an issue that plagues much of the fashion world and the world at large: the gender binary.
Celebrities like Billie Ellish often leads a gender neutral path and inspires teenagers by adopting styles which challenge the gender norms.
Gender neutral fashion shows. photo : pinterest
genderless makeup
“I recall being at a department store and wanting to buy a concealer, but I was so embarrassed that I told the sales associate it was a gift for a friend. Now, I walk into a store and buy exactly what I want, but I know many guys who still order online because they feel the same way.”
Rob Woodcox
Beauty and makeup was always been fashions inseparable part. With time, beauty industry was able to overcome the barriers of race and skintone and Gender is its latest target. Men have worn makeup as far back as ancient egypt but modern times witnessed changes in the fall of 2015 , when M.A.C collaborated with model stephanie seymour’s sons , Harry and Peter Brant , on a collection of Gender neutral Products.And within the past years , major brands have signed leading ‘boy beauty’ social media influencers on their ambassadors.
There’s a move towards a genderless or gender-neutral approach to makeup which WWD insists , is due to generation Z’s disinterest in Gender norms and Gender identification.
photo :courtesy of james charles 
photo :courtesy of james charles 
photo : pinterest 
photo: pinterest 
photo: courtesy of GQ
The way forward
The genderless future of fashion will be more than just putting men into womenswear and women into men’s, it’s all about the absolute freedom, freedom of choice and freedom of being ones most extravagant self. Now, it actually feels as if the societal stigmas related to staples such as dresses and heels could finally get broken down, with the mainstream acceptance and normalization of gender identities that once seemed foreign to some.
Reference links : http://www.vogue.com , http://www.wwd.com, http://www.alessandrotrincone.com
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