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Gender in the Blender
Source The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23397412-37275,00.htmlGeorgina Safe | March 19, 2008
“GIRLS who want boys, Who like boys to be girls, Who do boys like they’re girls, Who do girls like they’re boys.”
Gender in the blenderThe lyrics to this ridiculously infectious Blur song have popped into my head often over the past few weeks. Everywhere I look androgynous is where it’s at for girls and boys in fashion at the moment.
Partly male, partly female, androgynous style is wholly indeterminate and wholly cool.
Walk down Oxford Street in Sydney or Flinders Lane in Melbourne and you will be hard pressed to tell the stylish young men from the women. Guys in skinny jeans or leggings with women’s T-shirts and tank tops, girls in men’s blazers, shorts and waistcoats; its a unisex urban jungle out there right now. But please don’t actually use the U word, it’s so 1980s (remember the unitard?) and androgynous is so noughties.
We saw it on the catwalks of Milan last month, when Miuccia Prada sent out men in skirts and Gucci’s fey gypsy boys accessorised their voluminous velvet scarves and skinny pants with lashings of guyliner.
In Paris too, YSL designer Stefano Pilati ditched his riotous ruffles to refocus on tailoring for women, as did Balenciaga’s Nicholas Ghesquiere. “Austere” was the key word for Ghesquiere, who moved clothing away from the body, adding structure and stiffness and removing all vestiges of flimsy femininity in a slightly post-apocalyptic vision.
Why is this hermaphrodite dressing happening? Why are words such as guyliner and manscaping creeping into the vernacular, and why are straight men proud to use them? Why are women donning oversized mens blazers in numbers not seen since the ’80s, and how come Alexander Wang is one of the hottest designers in New York at the moment solely because he does the oversized mens blazer thing along with other masculine staples such as denim cut-offs and simple T-shirts?
To be honest, I have no real idea – only a few half-baked theories – as to why androgynous is so hot right now, but I know that it is.
Ben Pollitt, the designer of Sydney menswear and womenswear label Friedrich Gray, is introducing a new Gray androgynous collection in response to overwhelming demand. “It comes from the reaction to my clothes, women wanting to buy and wear the mens and men buying and wearing the womens,” says Pollitt.
“To me it became clear that there doesn’t need to be a specific sexuality to a particular item of clothing, if you can wear it so be it.”
His menswear silhouettes including tight, skinny legs, low crutch pants and long-length T-shirts and tanks work just as well on women by happenstance rather than design.
“It’s almost by chance that it fits women as well, I saw this happening and then just added and extended on the idea.”
Gray will appeal to women with attitude who prefer a sharp suit to a flimsy floral frock; the same personality type who began buying Hedi Slimane’s super-slim menswear in his glory days at Dior Homme.
“If it’s a good product it doesn’t matter who it’s for, people buy into the ideals of the label,” says Pollitt.
With the addition of a killer heel or statement jewellery his garments, stocked at Fat and Alice Euphemia in Melbourne and Incu and the Corner Shop in Sydney, translate easily from masculine maverick to femme fatale.
“My girlfriend wears it all without a qualm,” says Pollitt.
The handsome designer and his gorgeous partner may well be the poster boy and girl for androgynous dressing in Australia.
Androgynous style is nothing new. From Annie Hall and David Bowie through to Marilyn Manson and Suede’s Brett Anderson, creative types have long pushed the boundaries of personal identity through their clothing and makeup.
The new crossdressers include the Lebanese-born boy songbird Mika, our own Cate Blanchett doing Dylan in I’m Not There and English ingenue and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wolf, who models in the new Burberry advertising campaign.
In an interview with a British newspaper last year, Wolf raised many questions about his sexuality: “In the same way I don’t know if my sixth album is going to be a death-metal record or children’s pop, I don’t know whether I’m destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man. It makes life easier.”
If there were any doubt as to his bisexuality, last year he also told the Sydney Star Observer: “My sexuality is kind of liberal. I fall in love with men and women. I like to have sex and fall in love. I don’t like giving terminology for my sexuality.”
Nor do today’s designers like pigeonholing their garments.
“We’ve just launched a unisex capsule collection because we want it to appeal to both men and women,” says Monika Tywanek, one half of Melbourne label TV.
TV aren’t afraid of the word unisex; when you spruik liquid gold unitards and spandex denim leggings how could you be?
A gold paper-silk anorak, a pintucked pullover, a macrame singlet and that ’80s staple, the unisex track pant, are among the garments comprising TV unisex.
Tywanek says the line is partly being driven by young men’s renewed focus on grooming, diet and body image.
“It’s a fashion trend for guys to be skinny,” she says. You only have to look to the caved in chests and hunched shoulders at the recent Paris menswear shows to see super skinny is supposedly super sexy. Exit Gucci-era Tom Ford stage left, along with his ’90s army of stubbled, tanned and perfectly pecced homo sapiens.
David Beckham may ignited the flame of the contemporary metrosexual movement, but the torch has been passed to today’s international fashion stylists, magazine editors and designers (most notably Slimane’s Dior Homme replacement Kris van Assche) are using thinspiration to push it to new extremes.
“But in Australia the mainstream labels still don’t really design for tall, slim boys,” says Tywanek. “Male friends of ours were always saying we can’t find anything suitable so we saw a niche gap in the market for slim-line androgynous wear.”
Alex Cleary, who has many male customers for the women’s wear he designs at Melbourne label Alpha60 with his sister Georgie (they also do men’s), says some young men are breaking new boundaries with the look.
“It’s now progressed to the point where boys are rocking leggings not just under things but solo, maybe just with a short girl’s T-shirt, and that’s pretty out there.”
He pauses. “I wouldn’t be doing it, to tell you the truth.”
The concept of androgynous dressing is an old one, but this generation lacks the political circumstances that have driven fashion to masculine and feminine extremes in the past. Ditching corsets in the ’20s, the sexual revolution and “mod” of the ’60s and flower power of the ’70s, not to mention the hyper-masculine power suit of the ’80s, are among the instances of fashion following a substantive socio-political shift.
But this generation is harder to pin down when it comes to political expression and extremes. Could it be that androgynous dressing this time around provides us young people with an individualistic mode of expression to keep pushing the envelope on gender without being chained to society’s limiting definitions? But that all sounds a bit heavy.
At a more base level perhaps it’s just girls playing dress-ups and boys being boys. To state it simply, androgyny pulls the chicks.
It’s now the girl boys who get the groovy girls, according to Karen Rieschieck, who owns the Melbourne unisex boutique Alice Euphemia. “It’s a look that a lot of girls appreciate,” says Rieschieck. “That is the vibe from the frontline.”
Then there’s the way guys shop, which is about as down to earth as it gets and shows no signs of changing anytime soon.
“We are getting a lots of young guys coming in shopping in groups now,” says Rieschieck. “Last Saturday morning we had a posse of 18-year-old boys in the store. They were all goofing around and voicing opinions like ‘nah, dude’. It was really sweet.”
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1 Reply
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Interesting topic. For the first tiem in my life i may be “trendy” as whilst transitioning theres times i go out without make up and in fem jeans and top and male shoes and have wondered at how little reaction i get or maybe im hardening up to the stares and dont notice. The day males start wearing skirts in public as part of there wardrobe and fashion choice is when we have complete fairness in my view oh to dream lol
