The rise of unisexual dressing

The runways have been dismantled, the skinny boys have packed themselves off on their gap year and the photographers have migrated to Couture week. Mens fashion week has finished and I found myself keeping tabs on the proceedings with great interest. Because I don’t know about you but I do find this whole ‘high street copies designers’ game a bit predictable and samey. So why not ‘high street copies the mens collections’? I caught myself looking at the mens shows and thinking ‘how would I wear that?’ For example I really liked Burberry’s new jacket proportions and I reckon they would translate very easily to the womens market, can’t you just imagine one of these shrugged on over a stripy T-shirt dress with heeled ankle boots? I can! Gucci got me with their bags and shoes – a juicy turquoise tote, snazzy embroidered lace-up and a multi-colored loafer which I can easily see working in a tri-tone of red, pink and orange with an anklebone-grazing cigarette pant. Over at YSL, suits, shirts and blouson jackets were configured in fine womenswear silk gazars, organzas and voiles but I must admit, I was more taken with the fabby styling, I would quite happily rip this gold suit look off head to toe, perhaps switching the tie for some sort of silk scarf arrangement. Newcomer Richard Chai’s preppy-punk mash-up was gorgeously executed, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an appropriation in Topman sometime soon, ditto Maison Margiela’s wear-everyday trench jacket.

There’s been a lot of ruminating in the press over the merging of menswear and womenswear but in this day and age it’s not that surprising – why can’t we wear each other’s gender’s stuff? The more savvy high street stores are already on to this with the likes of Uniqlo and TopMan becoming popular with lateral-thinking girls because sizes run small and prices are keen, plus the clincher – there’s little chance of running into your arch fashion rival rocking the same jacket (unless ‘she’ of course, is a he).







Pics: Men.style.com
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Burberry
Burberry
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Gucci
Gucci
YSL
Richard Chai
Maison Margiela