We’ve made borrowing from the boys an art form. As we found out in MOJEH Issue 37, now they’re stealing our style.
By Natalie Trevis
Women wearing menswear is nothing new. From Le Smoking to Annie Hall’s eccentric turn on celluloid, masculine tailoring and oversized silhouettes have proved a powerfully desirable weapon in a woman’s wardrobe. The runways are littered with slimline tuxedo suits and boyfriend jeans, brogues and bowties. Trends ebb and flow with a fluidity that is increasingly genderless and now, what’s good for us is good for the boys, too. Christopher Bailey mastered the lace office shirt for Burberry’s spring/summer 2016 menswear collection, while in the same season, Gucci’s he-for-she collections confirmed Alessandro Michele’s vision of an anything-goes wardrobe, in which intricate embroidery, bow-tied blouses and loose fitting trousers are fit for whoever seeks to join his bohemian rebellion.
It’s hard to discuss any movement in fashion without circling back to Demna Gvasalia, whose ultra-modern attitude now pervades the boundary-busting Vetements and the storied house of Balenciaga. At Vetements, Gvasalia and the collective send both men and women down the runways (originally from necessity, when the label couldn’t find enough girls to model for it in the early days), a move that makes perfect sense when there’s barely any room to distinguish between the gender norms of a pair of floor sweeping open-front trousers worn by a chisel faced male model versus the Matrix-style leather coat of a be-hooded girl. Vetements’ loyal fans don’t care for such distinctions anyway. The trailing sleeves and beautifully gargantuan proportions of logoed bomber jackets and utility shirts are the main attraction regardless and, if it fits, it’s yours. Aside from such deliberately ambiguous collections, designers like Dries Van Noten have long tapped into a sense of opulence in menswear that was once the preserve of women. Finding a fitting home at the grand Palais Garnier in Paris, Van Noten closed the autumn/winter show with a shimmering fur trimmed jacket of bronze and golden brocade, seemingly spun from the sun itself. Every editor in the room, male and female, immediately filed a mental note on their wish lists. Never one to shy away from traditionally feminine notes, Dries Van Noten is one of a growing band of highbrow labels redefining the way men see fashion.
We only have to look to the streets to see this play out in real time. Marc Jacobs joyfully sports a varsity jacket from his s/s16 womenswear collection on Instagram (a veteran at cherry picking from the best in androgynous fashion, he wore a menswear Comme des Garçons lace dress to the Met Gala in 2012) and Stefano Pilati, formerly of Ermenegildo Zegna, regularly tops his tailored looks with a natty red Chanel tweed jacket. Likewise, Pharrell Williams is a longterm fan of Karl Lagerfeld’s work and has a penchant for wearing Céline with an effortlessness that mere mortals could only hope to replicate. Younger fashion vanguards – like Jaden Smith, a campaign star for Louis Vuitton womenswear s/s16 – have only ever dressed according to the fluid nature of what appeals to their ever-changing aesthetic. All of these appearances, and the many others seen on a daily basis on social media, style pages and runways, dilute the notion that menswear must stay in its conservatively tailored box. We celebrate the guys joining the glorious fashion party. What we wear sends many messages – it’s just that gender is no longer one of them.
