Fashion is probably such a crucial and widespread wave its innovative push sometimes get to overcome itself and make actual topics old.
To be clear, in the last days we’ve been hearing a lot about the obvious, what is a family?
The meaning of mothers and fathers able to have children, adopt their partner’s child, inherit, take decisions about their partner’s life, etc… all there hiding themselves not to see that “different” families already exist, not being them more or less special than the “classical and institutional” ones”…
Fashion creates gay icons, living on the stylistic and aesthetic signature of homosexual artists, creators and collaborators; it never stopped its huge refusal for discrimination, mass blindness, and unconsciousness of the “other”. Overcoming all political and moral steps, fashion does something else…it claims itself again. It’ no longer “gay is ok”, it has enough of it, since it’s claiming this from the 70s… no, the focus now shifts on “Generation Gender Neutral”. The normality of not having a gender. While leafing through Vogue, I found this wonderful article.
I feel so in line with everything it said, that is difficult to explain what is at the roots of the big difference, from the “revolts” in the 20s, when women were tired of being considered just “females” and started wearing trousers, then in the 70s they burned their bras to feel free, in the 80s, yuppies went to work with their sexy blouses, skinny trousers and oversize jackets, as an expression of power.
Brands became symbols to be often used as manifestation of power, “to show the logo” was a declaration, as for saying: “this is what and how much I can afford”.
Margiela was the first one to take off logos and labels. What you see from the outside are just the four stitchings of the label and nothing else: cleanness, rigorous silence.
Pioneer? Yes, sure.
Gucci, together with its stylist Alessandro Michele, is focusing on the “beauty” of the fabrics, the matchings, laces, brocades, colors that never claim their belonging to a specific gender: “it’s simply a beautiful item, which is perfect for you, so why not wearing it?”.
Vivienne Westwood always affirmed: “take good items from your closet or your friend’s or partner’s and just mix them”.
Unisex fashion is not a tabu now, and that’s clear from the retail world. If stylists followed the gender way it is because the market went that way, with clients buying half male and half female clothes, by choosing the product and not the department it is in.
Some of the names rising from the ranks thanks to this concept are:
Craig Green, Hood by Air, Trapstar, Bazar-14, KTZ and Vetement.
Keep an eye on them!
I’d like to close this chapter by remembering, as many did justly and maybe ostentatiously in the last weeks, one of the personalities in Rock history who had such an influence on young people, minds and style from the 70s until today.
David Bowie, myth, hero, and much more…Pioneer, he loved himself and his chameleonic nature, transforming himself from Ziggy Stardust to the White Duke, and always playing around with his feminine side.
His dear friend, actress and icon, Tilda Swinton, also uses her being so eclectic and “interchangeable” with a man.
Both of them showed to the generations the simplicity of just being original, by being themselves.
