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Androgyny is the combination of masculine and feminine traits or the hindering of both masculine and feminine traits. Androgyny in fashion can be used to express a person's sexuality, gender expression, social status, and more. As fashion is a prominent physical representation of a person's identity, the use of androgynous fashion has had of history of going against gender and sexuality roles in society.

The Gendering of Fashion

The physical differences and gender roles of society of men and women have shaped fashion choices for centuries. Men have had a more active role in society with the title of head of household which gained them traits like dominant, aggressive, and leadership, influencing the fashion to be structured and strong. In contrast women's clothing drew from traits related to motherhood, fertility, and sensuality which caused flowing, draping pieces that highlighted the wanted hourglass figure of a woman. In terms of physical differences between men and women, men tend to have larger shoulders in comparison to their waist, while women have the opposite. Also the waistline of men's pants tend to lie lower on their hips in comparison to women's which lay higher. These physical differences make simply switching clothes with the opposite gender not as androgynous as the physical differences between men and women are still pronounced. Popular culture and fashion want to exaggerate the physical differences of men and women which gives the clothes a sense of sexuality. Fashion is driven by sex. This is seen in how women's clothing has a tendency to emphasis the women's figure to show her fertility and ability to produce children. The more highlighted the physical differences are, the more the other gender knows that you are able to mate with them. This produces sexualized, gendered clothing. Especially looking at women's fashion going into the 60's, 70s, 80s, 90s, and the 2000s tight fitting clothing became the norm to highlight feminine curves and features. These characteristics of women's clothing were not seen in men's clothing. For example the popular men's fashion in the 90s was extremely baggy suits and pants, completely different from the tight fitting women's clothing.

The Ungendering of Fashion

Gendered fashion is more than putting masculine clothing like suits on women, and feminine clothing like skirts and heels on men. Androgyny lies more in manipulating physical appearance and shape to create a form that is gender neutral or sometimes inhuman like. Manipulating the human body can be covering up the body to not highlight any particular feature, or it can be adding space around the body to show a different shape. Two main concepts behind creating androgynous clothing are the concepts of rigidity and fluidity. Rigidity shapes the body to have hard edges, covering up the soft lines of the human body. While fluidity softens edges and creates new shapes of the body. These two ideas need to be combined in pieces to give the sense of true gender neutrality.

Androgyny in High Fashion

Issey Miyake's signature style of a rounded dress.

High fashion in magazines and runways of fashion designers have been known to be at the forefront of culturally changes in fashion. Especially in the late 20th century magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Womenswear has been at the forefront of androgynous looks as womenswear dominates the fashion industry with most designers designing for women. Fashion in the United States going into the 80's, 90s, and 2000's was heavily sex driven. With magazines such as Playboy making headlines the wanted look for a model ad clothes was skin tight and revealing. This brand of fashion emphasized the differences between men and women to try and sell clothes. Androgynous fashion made its most powerful in the 1980s debut through the work of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, who brought in a distinct Japanese style that adopted distinctively gender ambiguous theme. These two designers consider themselves to very much a part of the avant-garde, reinvigorating Japanism. Following a more anti-fashion approach and deconstructing garments, in order to move away from the more mundane aspects of current Western fashion. This would end up leading a change in Western fashion in the 1980s that would lead on for more gender friendly garment construction. This is because designers like Yamamoto believe that the idea of androgyny should be celebrated, as it is an unbiased way for an individual to identify with one's self and that fashion is purely a catalyst for this. Another designer at the forefront as Issey Miyake, a designers working primarily in the 1980's. In contrast to his western counterparts who made models fit the clothing, he made clothing to fit the model. A great example of this is Miyake's Minaret Dress from 1995 which has spheres stacked on top of one another.

Modern day designers are switching to more gender neutral clothing to appeal to a wider audience. The designers want to be more inclusive with their brands, not just to appeal to all genders but to all body types, races, and personal styles. Designers such as Jessica Gebhart, Allyson Ferguson, Dominic Sondag, and Chelsea Bravo are heading the modern androgynous style. Just like the Japanese designers before them the designers use fluidity and structure to form new shapes in the clothes. The modern androgynous styles also usually has a minimalist look with neutrals colors. The clothes tend to have basic color schemes but heavily play on new shapes.

Androgyny in the General Public

Androgyny in large part in the general public has been pushed by women trying to move outside the traditional gender roles. Fashion was and is still used to blur the lines of gender to create a sense of freedom from the confines of built in cultural roles and stereotypes. In the late 18th century and into the 19th century large movements for women's rights came to the forefront of social movements. These movements influenced fashion by having the corset become out of style, having dresses be shorter and have slits, and many other changes in style in terms of shape, color, and layers of women's fashion. A major shift in women's wear came with women being able to move outside dresses and wearing pants. The progression of women's rights also influenced hair styles in how formerly women always had long hair, new shorter bob hair styles were becoming popular. The rise of androgynous fashion going into the late 20th century shown the struggle of women trying to find their place as both family focused and work focused. The style would be titled a "powerful concept", "hard core", "androgynous chic", and many more and emphasized women moving into the workplace and taking on more masculine features to be seen as leaders, dominant, and intelligent just as men were seen. In the article “The Menswear Phenomenon” by Kathleen Beckett written for Vogue in 1984 the concept of power dressing is explored as women entered these jobs they had no choice but to tailor their wardrobes accordingly, eventually leading the ascension of power dressing as a popular style for women. Feminist saw androgyny as a way of physically representing them breaking out of the glass ceiling and becoming not just a woman, but an independent, powerful woman. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the women's liberation movement is likely to have contributed to ideas and influenced fashion designers, such as Yves Saint Laurent. Yves Saint Laurent designed the Le Smoking suit first introduced in 1966, and Helmut Newton’s erotized androgynous photographs of it made Le Smoking iconic and classic. The Le Smoking tuxedo was a controversial statement of femininity that revolutionized trousers.

Le Smoking Suit showcased at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco

Another cultural movement that heavily impacted androgynous fashion was the rise of LGBTQ+ spaces. In a time where coming out as a different sexuality could get someone hurt or isolated, it was necessary to create a code of sorts through fashion to bring the community together. Fashion became a way for people of different sexualities to show their differences and celebrate them. Androgyny was and is especially driven by lesbian and bisexual women groups as another way of breaking the mold of the social roles women are pressured into. The "look" of being gay was a signifier to others of your sexuality and united others in the community. It also allowed people to show their pride without being completely public with their sexuality. One of the reasons that the androgynous look was so connected to women who like other women was because it turned the male gaze off of the women. Dampening the womanly figure made the women less sexually appealing to men as they did not have the stereotypical look of a women. The look musicalized the women and made them attractive to other women.

Bibliography

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The Menswear Phenomenon". Vogue; Conde Nast.