Gender-Neutral Fashion, Designers, and Products
This week heavily featured content on gender-neutral fashion, designers, and products. Articles have claimed Harry Styles to be a trailblazer of gender-neutral fashion due to his recent Vogue photoshoot. The photoshoot not only features Styles in skirts and dresses, but he is also the first man to ever appear solo on the cover of Vogue. In his interview the singer stated, “When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything – anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means – it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”
However, some commented that Harry Styles, a cis white man, should not be the face of gender-neutral fashion when the movement was created by queer people of color. Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender nonconforming writer and performance artist posted, “Am I happy to see Harry be celebrated for openly flouting gendered fashion norms? Yes. Do trans femmes of color receive praise for doing the same thing every day? No. Do I think this is a sign of progress of society’s evolution away from binary gender? Yes. Do I think that white men should be upheld as the face of gender neutral fashion? No. Make no mistake: trans femmes of color started this and continue to face the backlash from it. Our aesthetics make it to the mainstream, but not our bodies. We are still dismissed as ‘too much’ and ‘too queer’ because we aren’t palatable enough to whiteness and heteronormativity. Is that Harry’s fault? No. It’s the fault of systems of transmisogyny and racism.”
Queer fashion designers discussed their gender-neutral designs and their experiences with entering the mainstream. Harry Styles’ gender fluid tour stylist, Harris Reed, commented, “I’d like to eradicate the categories of menswear and womenswear. Fluidity offers an alternate way of being, crossing and merging masculine and feminine.” Another nonbinary designer, Eden Loweth, discussed the design bias towards trans bodies and their work to combat that commenting, “As a trans person goes through hormone treatments, it changes the way that fabric sits on their body…You don’t need to be trans to understand what it’s like for your body to change shape over time.”
One article interviewed multiple fashion designers and fashion scholars about gender-neutrality. Dominic-Afsheen Akhavan-Moossavi, an educator in the UK who teaches a gender-neutral fashion course commented, “Brands want to align themselves with choice and openness to self-expression, so have made an active shift to let their customers and any person decide what they buy and want to wear. I do think it is becoming mainstream, or at least it’s being more widely discussed and shifting into the mainstream consciousness…(gender-neutral fashion is) this generation’s version of the punk scene, or the New Romantic scene, or the grunge scene in previous decades.”
Meanwhile, multiple articles posted detailed analyses of the gender-neutral clothing market with predictions for growth, trends and future challenges. One article discussed gender-neutral styling, outlining 20 staple pieces to curate a gender-neutral wardrobe. A couple of articles listed stores and brands to shop at in order to have a gender-neutral closet. Another article listed gender-neutral loungewear companies to shop from, since loungewear has become more popular in 2020 due to working from home.
Multiple articles mentioned Pharell Williams’ new gender-neutral skin care line named “Humanrace”. Williams stated, “Humanrace Skincare doesn’t differentiate by race or gender. We’re creating for humans; we are all born in the same skin.” Another Black-owned gender-neutral skin care line was featured this week. The creator, Roosevelt Augustin, stated, “Black skin care creators serve as an important reflection in the mirrors of Black children and adults everywhere. It is the first time that many see someone that looks like them crafting and curating products that understand their skin and that are intended to nurture, heal and replenish their skin. It’s a more powerful feeling when you know it’s someone that looks like you and shares the same skin experiences as you on the other side of the products. It’s a feeling of finally being seen.”
