Fashion is as complicated as it is important. Even for people who don’t much care about it – and, in many ways, especially for them – fashion is much of how we outwardly express ourselves as we navigate the world, how others sees us, as well as how we see ourselves.
This is even more crucial for trans and gender-fluid people, for whom their gender identity and/or its expression is both key and an often-challenged by society aspect of their lives. Of course, many trans, gender-fluid, and other queer people can and do follow the same fashion trends as straight cis people.
However, here we will take a look at gender-fluid fashion, in particular, and what that gender fluidity means, how it is expressed, how it is utilized, and how it has developed over the years to where it is today.
What is gender fluidity?
First and foremost, let’s define the key term here. As Harvard puts it:
“Gender fluidity refers to change over time in a person’s gender expression or gender identity, or both. That change might be in expression, but not identity, or in identity, but not expression. Or both expression and identity might change together.“
In other words, a gender-fluid person may or may not be trans. They are often non-binary, but even that isn’t a must as “non-binary” and “gender-fluid” aren’t necessarily synonymous with each other. Instead, gender fluidity simply refers to one’s movement back and forth, across, and beyond traditional gender norms.
For fashion, this isn’t really anything new. Much of fashion can be described as “gender-fluid” even when it wasn’t trying to present itself as such. In fact, a great deal of the greatest fashion leaps and trends have been done precisely thanks to one designer daring to look beyond the constraints of the gender norms of the society they lived in.
This is especially true today, in the Western world, as both millennials and Gen Z people are rapidly challenging and breaking down the imposed and imaginary societal boundaries set by their predecessors.
In other words – no you don’t need to go to a gay bar or try dating on this trans app to find people wearing gender-fluid clothing, as countless people from all walks of life do so today. What’s more, gender fluidity in fashion goes back far beyond the last couple of generations.
Gender fluidity in fashion throughout history
If you ask people, many would tell you that “women have always worn skirts and dresses, and men have always worn trousers.” Movies and pop-culture certainly haven’t helped with that myth, but suffice it to say that it’s very much incorrect.
These things have obviously gone differently in different cultures and throughout the different ages, but even just in the West, clothing was quite gender-neutral prior to the feudal times of the Middle Ages. For thousands of years before that, clothing was a reflection of status rather than gender, and for those without status, it was purely utilitarian.
It was the feudal market that brought gender clothing and gendered fashion. As soon as – and little by little even before that – the Renaissance started approaching, designers and artisans started looking for ways to bend the gendered fashion norms around them. Or, to make them “fluid,” one might say.
Naturally, with the emergence of the feminist movement in the mid 19th century and especially throughout the 20th century, the fluidity of gendered fashion began flowing incredibly rapidly, albeit mostly just for women’s fashion at first. In the span of just a few decades, women’s fashion moved all the way from corsets to cargos, while men remained stuck with the same old fashion choices.
Gender fluidity in fashion today
Nowadays, men’s fashion is slowly starting to do its part too and is slowly breaking the norms that had gripped it for centuries. There is a lot of catching up to do, but gender fluid fashion is flowing more and more between the two traditional gender norms and people are slowly getting used to not only women wearing pants but people wearing whatever they feel like wearing.
Or, at least we’re getting there. Most of the newer and more “out there” gender-fluid fashion trends are still usually only seen on the runways, on the media, or in queer bars and clubs. However, there are certain types of gender-fluid fashion that are pretty well-established in the mainstream already. The big ones are:
1. Suits
Initially meant for men only, today suits of virtually every kind are entirely gender-neutral. Instead of strictly representing masculinity, suits today represent sophistication, style, power and status. As such, men, women, and non-binary people alike can wear suits freely and feel perfectly fine in their clothes.
2. Denim jeans and jackets
Denim is genderless and has been genderless for quite some time. There used to be some gender norms for jeans – and, to an extent, there still are – but both baggy jeans for women and tight jeans for men are quite normal nowadays.
3. Sneakers
Another fashion piece that used to be mostly meant for men, sneakers today absolutely are for everyone. What’s more, like denim, the various designs, types, and colors of sneakers have also become almost entirely genderless, allowing all people to wear whatever they want.
4. Oversized clothes
Conventional gendered fashion dictates that broad shoulders and narrow waists are the norm for men while emphasized hips and waists are the norm for women. All of this flies out the window with the modern oversized clothes trend, however. Women, men, and gender-fluid people alike can look however they want and feel perfectly comfortable in their identity by wearing baggy and/or slightly oversized clothes, making this the perfect gender-fluid fashion trend.
Overall, “gender-fluid fashion” can be any trend that either directly breaks and challenges the traditional gender norms (as was the case when women first started wearing suits and other men’s clothing items) or any trend that circumvents traditional gendered fashion (as is the case with oversized clothes). It is curious, however, to see what the next big gender fluid fashion trend is going to be.
