It has been an innovative few weeks for America and the rest of the world, with the development to the legal rights for same-sex couples across the whole of the United States. President Barack Obama has described the ruling as a “victory for America” and across the world, millions of people have celebrated this adjustment. Changes and amendments in mentality are making themselves increasingly manifest across the globe, and not only in politics. Perhaps on a subtler but by no means un-paralleled level, the world of high-end fashion has also been exhibiting breaks in gender inequality and gender conventions.
Men’s Fashion Week in Milan introduced a new trend for men spring/summer of 2016; Pyjamas. As part of a new focus on loose-fitted clothing and ‘Co-ords’, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace were two amongst several fashion houses in Milan who featured robes and short pyjamas. GQ fashion editor Gary Armstrong was even pictured wearing a two-piece set during the event. Dries Van Noten and Louis Vuitton at Paris’ Men’s Fashion Week displayed this new style too. Such experimental and perhaps to some, whacky new modes are not unusual in the world of fashion which has always to an extent displayed an advanced and seemingly ‘radical’ slant on consumer aesthetics. What perhaps was a little different about Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week is that it presented highly ‘feminised’ male models. Gucci 2015 collection introduced trousers pooled at the ankles, silk shawls, laced shirts, an assortment of handbags and floral prints. To compliment this further, Paris’ Men’s Fashion Week, featured female models. Some of fashion’s biggest names made an appearance including Naomi Campbell, Irina Shayk, Joan Smalls and the increasingly popular, Kendall Jenner. Derision at Gucci’s Men’s collection has been expressed, some calling the models ‘ridiculous’. Equally, many were surprised at the appearance of women in Paris’ Men’s Fashion Week, particularly the use of such prominent personas who reportedly ‘stole the show.’ And yet surely this marks a remarkably exciting shift in fashion conventions. Why shouldn’t men wear women’s clothes? Why shouldn’t women ‘steal’ the show at male-orientated events?
It is good to see that finally shifts towards a break in gender conventions are underway. This increasingly flexible approach is perceived not only in the US legalisation of same-sex marriage, but in many underlying social indications. The fashion industry is a reflection of a world fighting for greater liberal freedom, but it also has the power to further influence people and our society. Gender equality in fashion and in international society as a whole is far from being fulfilled, but at least steps are being taken in the right direction.
