Timothée Chalamet in a red backless jumpsuit by Haider Ackermann at the Venice Film Festival; Harry Styles, liberated fashion icon, in a Gucci dress, on the cover of Vogue; the rapper Asap Rocky, a jeweled handbag as an accessory… this abolition of borders is highlighted with overexposure on social networks. On TikTok, microtrends appear like so many calls to go beyond the stereotypes sticking to masculine elegance: manicured nails and makeup for boys, adoption of the cropped top, waltz of accessories, and even wearing the corset, a historic piece of clothing. feminine elegance. “Previously, genderless was confused with unisex and mainly referred to male clothing worn by girls,” explains fashion historian Serge Carreira. The novelty that goes with a new definition of this word is this questioning of the male wardrobe, with a rejection of virilist archetypes. »
Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles, Asap Rocky… the actor, pop star and rapper display their gender-neutral style on red carpets and on the covers of magazines.
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From unisex to “genderless”
The porosity between genders in clothing therefore does not date from the digital age. As early as the 1930s, certain Hollywood stars like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo used suits and tuxedos to their advantage by making pants their own. In the 60s and 70s, women set out to conquer the men’s wardrobe, a symbol of power. In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent introduced the tuxedo into the women’s wardrobe by adapting the cut to the woman’s body. Young people are adopting it in its more accessible Saint Laurent Rive Gauche version. A few years later, artists, like David Bowie with his Ziggy Stardust outfits, created their stylistic signature, as powerful and unclassifiable as their compositions.
At the sources of masculine-feminine
Since Antiquity, the differences between male and female have been through clothing and the codes have been strict. In the Middle Ages, wearing clothing of the other gender was prohibited by law, with famous examples of transgression, from Joan of Arc donning armor to Geneviève Prémoy, alias the knight Balthazard, a woman disguised as an officer of the the army of Louis XIV. A few pieces confuse our bearings: the dress was worn by men in the Middle Ages, of different shape and length depending on social class; makeup, makeup and wigs completed men’s outfits in the 18th century.
The prohibitions weigh mainly on ladies. A law, which was only repealed in 2013, stipulates that a woman wishing to dress as a man must request authorization from the police headquarters. This was without counting the avant-garde and feminists who shake up this established sartorial order. Some activists advocate genderless for the benefit of women and freedom of dress. Different currents are pushing for this development: from the so-called “flappers” movement in the 1920s to figures of literature and the arts like George Sand, including the American women’s rights activist Amelia Bloomer, who gave her name to bloomers. . The practice of certain sporting disciplines, from horse riding to cycling, tennis and swimming, also helps to move the lines.
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Ready-to-wear buries the war of the sexes
The ready-to-wear industry has played a role in this dissipation of borders with permanent comings and goings. In 1970, when it was hot in France, Jacques Esterel created a unisex collection and invited men to wear shirt dresses. In front of the ORTF cameras, he presented the “Sumerian” on the Champs-Elysées, “a dress that allows you to face all the circumstances of life. I’m not saying you have to dress like that, I’m saying: you can dress like that. It’s my revolution,” he adds. It is also that of Jean-Paul Gaultier, who, in the 80s, took the skirt out of the women’s wardrobe.
In front of Bernard Rapp, in 1989, he spoke of the “symbolic side”, a means of transcribing “another way of seducing” through clothing, and of this “part of fragility” claimed by certain men. “At Jacques Esterel, there was no militant approach, no real reflection on the place of men and women,” explains Serge Carreira, “but the desire for a unique wardrobe. With Gaultier, it’s more irreverent, there is exaltation, an almost libertarian side, even if we stay on the masculine frame of reference of the kilt. What differs is the resonance with society. »
The catwalks mix genres
After years of unbridled disposable fashion, pushing for differentiated collections for more volumes, the catwalks and the industry are starting to mix silhouettes. Fashion Weeks, although still themselves gendered, give a new direction by mixing feminine and masculine looks. We think of Paul Smith organizing a mixed fashion show in January 2017 during men’s fashion week in Paris, forty-one years after his debut in the capital. Some “men’s” brands integrate more fluid silhouettes into their creative proposals, the men’s cropped top at Acne Studios, the skirt at Ludovic de Saint Sernin or Wales Bonner.
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The role of Generation Z
As noted in the study carried out by the trends firm LeHerpeurParis for the Tranoï* trade show: video games, whose audience is growing among this generation Z, feature non-gendered characters and thus contribute to accelerating the movement. This change in mentality among these young people resonates with a new way of designing clothing. Less submission to codes and a real choice in the great “everything” of fashion, guided more by emotions than by status.
In this large degendered family, the style offices distinguish different groups, to which they have given names borrowed from Anglo-Saxon vocabulary: the “neo-swags” occasionally select feminine pieces to perfect a look and stand out, the “masculine” are used more cheerfully in the wardrobe of the other sex and, finally, “free-style” reinvents a completely recomposed silhouette. Among boys’ favorite pieces: the bag, the skirt, the tank top, jewelry (chain, necklace, rings) and, of course, the color pink, completely integrated into their wardrobe. On TikTok and Instagram, genderless influencers are working to make the phenomenon viral. Finally, having a shared locker room echoes a desire for more freedom as well as a desire to limit textile pollution. In genderless, let’s not forget, there is “less”, which means “less than”.
* International trade show for young designers, partner of Paris Fashion Week.
2023-10-14 17:09:38
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