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Men in skirts

London-based Irish designer JW Anderson wants to put men in a tunic. Or perhaps a pair of ruffled hot shorts paired with a shoulder-baring bustier.

London-based Irish designer JW Anderson wants to put men in a tunic. Or perhaps a pair of ruffled hot shorts paired with a shoulder-baring bustier.

And Anderson is not the only one who thinks men should dress that way. For several seasons now, designers including Raf Simons, Astrid Andersen, Jonathan Saunders and Walter van Beirendonck have shown collections that subvert gender norms. This means ruffled shirts; toga, halter or backless scarf tops; skirts, dresses and pinafores — all for men.

Still, the styles and cuts look so girlie, you wonder if the designers are just messing around and passing womenswear off as men’s fashion. But this is what postmodern androgyny looks like and it is supposed to move men’s fashion forward.

Androgyny’s presence in pop culture is not new. David Bowie and Annie Lennox made headlines with their strangely seductive, androgynous looks. In the ’80s, Yohji Yamamoto made his debut in Paris with his severe, all-black monastic, deconstructed, origami-influenced suiting that aimed to dissolve gender distinctions: His women were in trousers, suits or combat-style fatigues; his men, in kaftan-like skirts. Avant-garde and intellectual, it was revolutionary.

Almost a decade later, Calvin Klein’s minimalist and youth-driven androgyny celebrated diversity and gender equality in denim jeans and cotton Henley tees (and waistbands of Calvin Klein underwear peeking out), which became the uniform of youth culture. Androgyny was also closely linked to ’90s grunge that put the group collective above the individual. No surprise then, that “We Are One” was the slogan for the unisex CK One scent.

The cross-gender influences seen in recent years have paralleled the movements of specific designers in the industry, who have switched portfolios from menswear to women’s fashion and vice versa. Two big names are Hedi Slimane and Simons. Both cut their teeth in men’s fashion. Both now head two of the most influential and dynamic womenswear lines — Slimane for Saint Laurent Paris and Simons for Dior.

Conversely, designers like Saunders, as well as Christopher Kane and Richard Nicoll, went from womenswear to men’s, and then back to women again. All of these movements have made the current unisex renaissance in both men’s and women’s fashion an interesting show to watch. For example, from the Fall/Winter 2014 women’s shows are Miu Miu’s colour-block rubberised mac; the oversized felted-wool coats with huge lapels at Hermes; and Paul Smith’s elegant striped pyjama jackets — all items that men could just as easily wear. Similarly, some clothes in JW Anderson’s pre-Fall 2014 women’s collection are the exact items shown in his Fall/Winter 2014 men’s collection, only paired differently. Anderson, for one, believes in, as he reveals in a New York Times interview, “a shared wardrobe where garments don’t have sex”.

But some of the androgynous looks in menswear now are hardly gender-neutral. Instead, they are intentionally courting, hamming up gender politics, deliberately muddying the line, clearly borrowing clothing styles, silhouettes, fabrics and prints from the opposite camp (no pun intended). Look at the oversized T-shirts worn as dresses and the pinafores seen at the Spring 2014 Raf Simons show. Or toga tops from Danish designer Astrid Andersen’s Fall/Winter 2014 collection. Or the backless scarf tops from Brit designer Lee Roach’s Fall/Winter 2014 show. While perfect for women, they might be too feminised for men.

The postmodern androgynous rhetoric may legitimise men wearing women’s clothes, but the reality is that it’s basically still a man in a dress of sorts. How is that fashion-forward? Victorian dandy types or even metrosexuals can be accused of vanity or over-preening, but their aesthetics are seldom, if ever, feminine and, unlike the unisex spins of today, don’t challenge conventional notions of masculinity.

Danish designer Nicklas Kunz, whose contemporary menswear label features casual sportswear with luxe materials, feels the new take on androgyny is overrated and emasculates men. He aims to put the sex back into his clothes by accentuating the shoulders to emphasise strength and confidence. His menswear designs channel the “traditional hunter”, so as to reclaim the power and beauty of masculinity.

Stefano Pilati, who heads design at Ermenegildo Zegna and its Couture Collection, agrees that gender lines shouldn’t be blurred. He does think, though, that classic menswear could be less rigid. As men become more body-conscious, it’s expressed in clothes that have a closely defined silhouette. “I am intrigued by this and how to express it in classic menswear. It’s an attitude to dressing up that can be more feminine, less strict,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Having said that, I’m not about to start advocating skirts for men!”

Since joining Zegna, he has made notable differences. For example, his debut Couture Collection for Spring/Summer 2014 showed a wide spectrum of colours used in suiting — 33 in all, from neutrals to blues and pinks through to sage green and teal. That’s not typical of menswear. There are curved cuffs to avoid using buttons. And he has also introduced the idea of the “broken suit” — taking a jacket from one suit and teaming it with pants from another, as long as the shades match. It breaks the rigidity of classic menswear, a fluid femininity without compromising masculinity.

Practicality, not frivolity, has always been a tenet of menswear — hence the reason that fit and fabric are constant benchmarks for it. Where womenswear seeks to be ground-breaking, menswear is more prudent, making constant refinements and updates to existing blueprints. Adopting floral and tribal prints, both big trends in the past few seasons, working with new colours or hues in new ways are ideas that menswear has borrowed successfully from womenswear.

But perhaps all this brouhaha about men wearing skirts is moot: After all, the Scots, Malays and Indians, among others, have been doing so for a long time, right?

The original article appeared in the July issue of Style:MEN magazine, now available at all newsstands.

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