The End of Gender

Has fashion bid the binary goodbye?

One of the biggest trends of the spring 2022 fashion shows that just ended was not any particular silhouette or color, but rather the fact that many designers put both women and men on their runways in what once would have been termed “women’s wear” — not so much as provocation but simply as a matter of fact. Here, our two critics debate why, and what that may signify in terms of gender identity, sexuality and society.

Vanessa Friedman: Guy, I was thinking of you during the last two weeks of Milan and Paris shows because while they were nominally “women’s wear,” that term and its corollary — “men’s wear” — your bailiwick — seem increasingly meaningless.

This wasn’t gender fluidity or gender neutrality or dual gender — all hybrids that have been thrown around to refer to shows that combine men’s and women’s collections, say, or feature clothes that are sort of generic and not really identifiable by the traditional categories of gendered dressing. This was something new. Like … gender agnosticism. So we’d see classically “girlie” clothes in bright colors, soft fabrics and lots of decoration, only they were worn by guys.