

Like Porter and Fern, Styles is communicating through the most visible billboard he possesses – his own body – that clothes don’t need to be tethered to familiar male/female moorings to be a legitimate form of self-expression. His message was clear: if he likes it, he’ll wear it, regardless of which side of the gender aisle it hangs. When The Guardian recently broached the subject of bisexuality with him, Styles’s two-word response managed to be both important and throwaway: “Who cares?” He denied sprinkling “nuggets of sexual ambiguity” into his appearances in order to seem more interesting. On the same night, he wore a white-lace Gucci jumpsuit to perform Falling and a brown suit, also by Gucci, which he teased into immortality with a pair of Mary Janes and a string of pearls (a trademark flourish that at least two Jonas brothers and Usher have since purloined). There’s nothing new about high-profile androgynous stylings: Marlene Dietrich’s cross-dressing in the 1930s and David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane incarnation in the ’70 spring to mind.Īt February’s Brit Awards, Styles, who is 26, seemed to stop time itself in a daffodil-yellow spring womenswear suit by Jacobs, teamed with a lilac chiffon pussy-bow in the valley of his lapels. (Haute is the operative word: 23-year-old Reed, a recent graduate of Central Saint Martins, London’s renowned arts and design college, is six foot eight.)

His choices exude a delicious ’60s-era Mick Jagger nonchalance – remember those billowing, carelessly unbuttoned silk shirts? – even as he wears labels by Gucci and Marc Jacobs as well as Harris Reed, London’s new darling of “haute” androgyny.
#Gender fluid clothing free
Over on the other side of the Atlantic, former One Direction hottie Harry Styles, whom new bestie Lizzo describes as a “human Hershey’s Kiss”, has been going all out to seed notions around non-binary style – a way of dressing that’s free of traditional gendered associations – into mainstream consciousness. He was lauded for his gender-blurring appearance on the red carpet. That same night, actress Judy Greer (Kidding) did her bit to challenge gender norms, too, by wearing a roomy, wide-legged tux by Alberta Ferretti.Īmerican Horror Story star Cody Fern at last year's Golden Globes. At the Golden Globes, held five weeks earlier, he’d worn a grey, floral-embroidered suit with a matching, pink-lined cape by Randi Rahm, lending solidarity to his American Horror Story co-star Cody Fern, who was lauded for his own gender-blurring appearance on the red carpet: his look included a sheer black blouse, flicked hair, eyeshadow and lip gloss.
#Gender fluid clothing tv
“It had me think about all the kids who were seeing themselves represented on TV for the first time.” “I loved ,” Dan/Dannielle Owens-Reid, founder and chief executive of Radimo LA, a gender-fluid clothing brand, told the Los Angeles Times. Yet the commentary was entirely snark-free, the style pack quickly pronouncing Porter’s bold look – and its challenge to conventional, gender-conforming fashion – an unqualified success. He said the conversation about fluidity inside of clothing was "one of the last frontiers".

But if you put a man in a dress, it’s disgusting.”Īctor Billy Porter at last year's Academy Awards wearing the Christian Siriano tuxedo-gown. Now it’s actually gone so far in the other direction and is considered so normal. “We’ve moved from women wearing pants being a bad thing. “The conversation about fluidity inside of clothing is one of the last frontiers,” he said. Porter’s wearing of it, before a gathering of the world’s press, was a political statement. The gown, which hid Porter’s six-inch heels, was sumptuous in both fabric and shape – a tailored, black-velvet tuxedo from the waist up and a great swaying bell of a skirt from the waist down, its proportions so pronounced they conjured an antebellum Scarlett O’Hara. In one glittering LA nanosecond, he became a social-media sensation.
#Gender fluid clothing series
At last year’s Academy Awards, Billy Porter, star of Pose – a TV series about New York’s underground ballroom culture during the 1980s – stepped out in a gown by Christian Siriano.

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text sizeĮven the dark lords of red-carpet style who trade in superlatives had to hail it as a first.
