The Rise of Gender-Neutral Garments
By Selkie Winter-Golden
With the recent (and intermittently fluctuating) rise of gender education surrounding gender as performance, the fashion industry has shifted to reflect this conversation, expanding to include alternate styles in which individuals can freely express themselves outside of gender norms. These fashions are usually grouped under the same category, under the descriptors of “androgynous” or “gender neutral.” This style varies from person to person, some equating gender-neutral garments with muted hues and a baggier fit, others disregarding labels completely and sporting traditionally gendered pieces and colors. This poses the question: what exactly makes clothing gender-neutral? Is making a point of avoiding traditionally gendered garments when attempting to dress in a gender-neutral fashion further ingraining the pieces previous labels as feminine or masculine?
Many brands across the world have broadened their designs to cater to a multitude of tastes and preferences, like Los Angeles-based clothing store, Big Bud Press. The shop specializes in unisex, size-inclusive, everyday-wear clothing. The brand’s color palette ranges from muted browns to bright blues, pinks, and yellows, spanning an array of different patterns and textures. Brand founders, Phillip Seastrom and Lacey Micallef, longed for a clothing line that was truly unisex, tailored to all body types, and not solely based upon a masculine fit.
In an interview for Nylon Fashion, Micallef explains her thought process behind the creation of gender-neutral, size-inclusive garments, stating, “There's women's clothing I like and men's clothing I like—except men's clothing, which is often sold as unisex, only fits a stereotypically male body, and that was also frustrating for me. Our T-shirt, for example, has been let out in the hips and the stomach. So, if you're a woman who doesn't want a shirt with sleeves that go down to your elbows, you don't have to wear a size that's two or three sizes too big because it has to fit around your hips and your stomach.” Micallef later went on to state in an interview with Fader Magazine that she did not want anything about her clothing to be “inherently prohibitive,” thus resulting in the wide array of colors, designs, sizes, and styles included in her brand.
Other clothing designers have taken a more subtle approach to their genderless garments, such as Oregon-based climate-conscious clothing brand Olderbrother. Founders Bobby Bonaparte and Max Kingery hope to reflect the colors of Mother Nature herself within their clothing designs, sourcing their dyes from chaga mushrooms. The garments’ colors range from creams to navy blues and coffee browns, with the clothing store’s main focus on sustainability and slow fashion, accompanied by a genderless twist. Garments mainly include heavier jackets, pants, and shirts, without patterns or embellishments. The brand resembles the popular unisex style, steering clear of garments like dresses or skirts, which have historically carried associations with femininity. This constitutes the question of what it means to produce gender-neutral fashions, as most pieces within the brand are traditionally associated with masculine labels.
Big Bud Press and Olderbrother are both high-quality, sustainability-conscious, refined clothing lines. Although the two brands embody different aspects of what it means to dress in a gender-neutral or unisex fashion, both fall within the style gracefully, illustrating the insignificance of the gender binary and all labels that comprise it. The future of fashion is genderless, and so is the fashion industry.