UNISEX CLOTHING
Popov Arina
Technical University of Moldova
This article is supposed to the idea of unisex or genderless clothing as the center of the cultural zeitgeist.
Deconstruction revealed the process of tailoring, shape, and construction through surpassing gender codes
and questioning body proportion. While traditional fashion physically reinforces sexual codification, these
movements took the notion of gender identity away from clothing and reinserted the importance of garment
fabrication and the conceptual origins of creation.
Unisex, fashion, gender equality, garnment
Subcultures, fashion and subversion
To understand what fashion means, we have to place it into its historical context. Likewise, we can't
understand clothes outside of the society that gives them meaning -- or apart from the industry that makes
and markets them.In our research, we've studied how subcultures in the United States have used clothing
to create communities that are critical of mainstream values. And there's a long history of gender lines
being blurred in clothing as a way to demonstrate equality of the sexes or freedom from sexual
roles.There has always been some amount of unisex clothing in the American culture. As far back as 1824,
the New Harmony socialist utopian community permitted both men and women to wear trousers, an almost
scandalous move. Late in the 19th century, women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer passionately argued
that women should be allowed to wear pants (called “bloomers”) under their shortened dresses.
Unisex clothing was a baby-boomer corrective to the rigid gender stereotyping of the 1950s, itself a reaction
to the perplexing new roles imposed on men and women alike by World War II. The term “gender” began to
be used to describe the social and cultural aspects of biological sex in the 1950s—a tacit acknowledgement
that one’s sex and one’s gender might not match up neatly. The unisex clothing of the 1960s and 70s aspired
“to blur or cross gender lines”; ultimately, however, it delivered “uniformity with a masculine tilt,” and
fashion’s brief flirtation with gender neutrality led to a “stylistic whiplash” of more obviously gendered
clothing for women and children beginning in the 1980s.
As far as the American fashion industry was concerned, the unisex movement came and largely went in one
year: 1968. The trend began on the Paris runways, where designers like Pierre Cardin, Andre Courreges, and
Paco Rabanne conjured up an egalitarian “Space Age” of sleek, simple silhouettes, graphic patterns, and
new, synthetic fabrics with no historical gender associations.
Unisex clothing Brands
All the sleek pieces in One DNA’s first ever collection, inspired by travels to Iceland, are unisex and can be
worn front-to-back. They are designed to be worn year-round by “all genders, ages and races.” Talk about
inclusive!
“Marimacho” is an offensive Spanish term for “butch,” essentially. In line with queer tradition, creators
Crystal and Ivette González-Alé reappropriated the term to designate their “classic fashion for the
unconventionally masculine.” Their suits, loungewear and colorful swimwear are meant to fit masculine-
identified women better than menswear ever can.
Canadian designer Rad Hourani describes his work as “an attentive study of the human body that celebrates
neutrality as a defining human trait.” All of his simple clothes are unisex—and friggin’ gorgeous, if you ask
us.
FLAVNT Streetwear is an Austin brand for "men, women, and everybody in between." As the name
suggests, its founders intended their clothes to promote body confidence and self-love for all—concepts that
in an ideal world would have nothing to do with gender. Their cool as fuck designs are modeled by members
of Central Texas' Queer community, all of whom are given proper introduction on the site, a rarity in the
world of fashion.
All the sleek pieces in One DNA’s first ever collection, inspired by travels to Iceland, are unisex and can be
worn front-to-back. They are designed to be worn year-round by “all genders, ages and races.” Talk about
inclusive!
Fig.2 One DNA unisex brand Fig.3. Marimacho unisex brand
Bibliography
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2. Ricard, Francois Vincent, Objets de la mode, Ed. DuMay, Paris, 1989
3. The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever , Teri Agins, 2000
4. Dior by Dior: The Autobiography of Christian Dior, Christian Dior, 1954
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2006
6. The Fashion System, Roland Barthes, 1968
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