Jordan Grubbs

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Brion, Katherine

Area of Concentration

Gender Studies

Abstract

The rise in everyday feminism and other social justice movements over the past decade has resulted in an ever-widening call, aided by social media, to revolutionize representation in fashion. Similar to the 1960s and 70s emergence of unisex and androgynous fashion alongside the Women’s Liberation Movement, the contemporary fashion industry – particularly highfashion – is attempting to accompany and encourage gender revolution today. This thesis will examine three of the most popular industry approaches to circumventing traditional gendered expectations and perceptions of dress. Chapter One, entitled “Unisex Fashion: Removing Gender from the Equation,” calls attention to a unisex approach to genderless fashion that ultimately seeks to release the hold that gendered word choice have on dress and gender perception. In this chapter, I will argue that unisex fashion, as exemplified by the brand Telfar, prioritizes universality and equality within dress through the absence of gender labels, more nuanced attention to sizing, greater focus on personal expressivity, as well as by challenging the dominance of masculinity in mainstream genderless fashion. Although unisex is arguably the least transgressive form of contemporary genderless fashion presented in this analysis, Telfar demonstrates how this approach can serve as an accessible entry point into playing with gender codes: it eases consumers into this exploration without the pressure of gendered language or bold statements, while also being affirming to some gender-nonconforming individuals through the absence of gendered terminology. Chapter Two, entitled “Androgyny: Destabilizing ‘Feminine’ and ‘Masculine,’” will examine the androgynous approach to genderless fashion, which works to push back against gender norms within gendered categories, rewrite what constitutes contemporary menswear and womenswear, and popularize gender-nonconforming aesthetics within mainstream society. I argue that androgynous dress, as exemplified by the brand Gucci (under Alessandro Michele as creative director), promotes the disruption of traditional gender codes while retaining the binary categories of menswear and womenswear, embracing both gendered and gender-nonconforming usage and the transgressive use of dress among high-profile figures. Chapter Three, entitled “Genderqueer: Created for Gender-Fluid Expression,” will focus on a queer-centered approach to genderless fashion. In this chapter, I will argue that the brand Harris Reed exemplifies the ways in which a genderqueer-centered approach to genderless fashion invokes binary categories in order to subvert them, while engaging with queer culture and queer voices and seeking to amplify them within mainstream media. This approach in particular can benefit genderqueer individuals by acknowledging, encouraging, and affirming their experiences, while also working to disrupt binary expectations and encourage genderfluid expression in mainstream culture. Although each approach targets different concerns, they all ultimately work to disrupt and/or liberate people from dominant binary narratives that offer limited, socially constrained versions of femininity and masculinity.

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