The Bloggomist: Three Times a Trend
Fashion Opinion

Lately I’ve been on the search for a dress. Something simple, probably black, nothing crazy. No studs, no abstract crocodile patterns, no slashed fabrics and definitely nothing that resembles Dynasty-era Joan Collins. Sparkly, shoulder-padded gowns already had their decade, thank you very much. However as I start my semi-annual dress excursion I already know it will end badly. One reason is that I absolutely abhor shopping, the other is that every time I start this search I immediately end it because I get frustrated and decide “screw this, I’m wearing pants!” Now I enjoy a nice dress, flirty skirt or killer heel as much as the next girl but I have this rowdy inner tomboy that, when push comes to shove, has always won out. I’ve tried to fight back but whenever I up the girl factor I always see pictures of myself after the fact and am appalled at how fake and contrived I appear. Nothing looks worse on a girl than trying too hard.

Looks from the Rad by Rad Hourani presentation courtesy of Jak and Jill

As I’ve gotten older I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that no matter how many cupcake frocks and glamour girl gowns I see in the magazines, I will always be a slacks and shirt kind of girl, end of story. What I’ve been noticing in a lot of fashion and street style lately is that not only are more and more girls saddling up with us tomboy types, but it appears that a lot of boys are getting more comfortable with their androgynous sides too. I’ve always been curious as to who exactly it was that decided boys should wear pants and girls should wear dresses because if history serves me correctly, a man invented high heels and Greek warriors wore skirts and tunics in battle. Is it really so hard for us to imagine that maybe there are no real “mens” and “womens” rules, and if so does this idea completely throw all previous notions of gender out the window? Well, I won’t go that far but there is definitely an underground current shaking up the inner workings of style and challenging societal parameters on how we should dress.

Chloe Sevighny for Opening Ceremony Courtesy of Opening Ceremony

It isn’t just about shock value either. Most of the these style kids aren’t abandoning their sexuality, the girls aren’t taping down their breasts and the boys aren’t mimicking pageant queens. Rather this movement seems to be one pushing towards gender neutrality where you’re not crossing lines between what boys wear and what girls wear because there are no lines at all.  Designers like Rad Hourani and Australia’s Chronicles of Never embody this neutrality to perfection with their collections which bear no visible attachment to either gender. Instead they exist in this sort of alternate plane where a beautiful piece of clothing is a beautiful piece of clothing with no other qualifying terms to be sorted out.

American Apparel offers over 700 items that are deemed "unisex." Courtesy of http://www.americanapparel.net

But is it about the clothing itself or is it about the rebellion? Psychologists would be quick to pinpoint this as a generation’s way of saying that they’re not excepting the general standards for things any longer, a sort of fashionable smashing of the stereotypes. Others would say it’s a subversive way of evening the playing field between men and women; remove the aesthetic gender distinctions and you remove the boundaries that go with them. Although I appreciate this educational delving into the subject, I have a sneaking suspicion that when a girl decides to throw on a pair of motorcycle boots rather than heels in the morning she’s really not thinking about much more than comfort. However that may be a very one-sided opinion.

Fabiola Bercasa (left) outside the Alexander Wang show. Courtesy of Jak and Jill: http://jakandjil.com/blog/?paged=3

I’ve always been an advocate for dressing how you feel. For having your personal comfort take precedence over trend and season and whether this new form of gender commonality can be attributed to a refractory nose thumbing to tradition or a deeper study into our own human evolution, it does make getting dressed a hell of a lot easier. The more we strip away the layers of rules and regulations, stipulations and guidelines for how things are to be put together, the more freedom and interpretation come into play and the more at ease people become with truly being themselves. I already hear some voices from the gallery screaming about decency, sexuality, morals, all of the things that have been set out for us as a culture, as human beings! And while I don’t necessarily want to see men running the streets in tights and heels and girls growing beards, I think the openness into letting people explore what makes them comfortable and challenging the validity of stereotypes is part of our human obligation. Women will always be women and men will always be men, there is no doubt about that but the ideas of what men and women should be within those basic gender descriptions have be shifting for quite some time.

Fashion has continually been a sort of aesthetic manifestation of society, a cultural timeline for speaking to the changes in the world around us and a visual response to those changes. It’s inevitable that with each new generation will come a renewed sense of self and a fresh perspective on the way we live. Although it’s pretty safe to say that as a whole the gender roles are still safe within their confines, the fact that so much of fashion is pioneering and responding to this notion of finding neutral ground between the sexes might speak to it being a greater idea as a whole. In today’s society, with things evolving so rapidly, what does it really mean to be a man or a woman? Even if we can’t answer that question directly, what’s becoming abundantly clear is that those boundaries can’t be outlined by aesthetics alone. While the clothes may make the man, they don’t ultimately define who he (or she) is.

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Published on 27 November 2009 | |