Get To Know Genderless Fashion, A Style Of Dress That Is Free Of Masculine And Feminine Preferences

Clothing illustrations (Unsplash / Hannah Morgan)

JAKARTA - The style of dress in motion continues to achieve liberation of masculine and feminine preferences. This style is known as genderless or gender-neutral fashion. More often it is called the androgynous style of dress.

This style of dress has often been used by musicians such as David Bowie, Prince, and Annie Lenox since the 1970s. Long before that, in the early 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli pioneered gender-neutral clothing. She cut skirts to make culottes for couture collections.

Reported by Oumagz, Tuesday, February 2, apart from Elsa, the androgynous style of dress can be recognized in Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking collection in the 1960s.

The initiation of this style was not easily accepted by the community. In fact, ambiguous preferences are considered taboo to be used and popularized. Clothing with androgynous style eventually became the distinctive style of a public figure or someone who freed himself from binary, masculine or feminine opposition.

In Indonesia, fashion designers like Oscar Lawalata often wear androgynous attire. A model, Darell Ferhostan, who confidently wears gender-neutral style clothes, has traveled all the way to France.

The style of dress that is increasingly liberating is also absorbed in Indonesian society today. This can be found in hoodies, oversized blazers, flannel shirts, jeans, and t-shirts that are not restricted by gender.

Quoting from The Fashion Globe Magazine, Dawnn Karen, MA, Ed.Mc - a fashion psychologist and founder of the Fashion Psychology Institute, explains that this evolution in fashion points to women who have careers in the field of male work.

Dawnn gave an example that police uniforms were designed for men, now women who are police officers also wear these uniforms. Nowadays, the fashion world is fluid. Defining the way to dress is not easy. But at one point fashion portrayed the openness and acceptance of an inclusive society.

Illustration of woman wearing an oversized blazer (Unsplash / Svetlana Pochatun)

Like the binary opposition between feminine and masculine which in genderless style no longer applies. What is created is freedom of style in dressing without fear of expressing one's own identity.

Dawnn explains more about perceptions of clothing. According to him, technological advances on the one hand can open up access to things we don't know about, for example the style of Victorian era dress.

While there are things that are not known about the culture that animates this style of dress, consumers wear Victorian styles based on their knowledge. Furthermore, the style of dress can be chosen freely and openly responded by the community.

Genderless fashion gets rid of outdated dress norms. Various brands such as Umit Benan, Norma Kamali, Wildfang explicitly adhere to a unisex identity in their clothing collections.