Rushing to LaGuardia for a red-eye flight to Mexico City last May, I didn’t give much thought to what I would wear. I was going on tour with the YSO—this was no fashion show. But airport outfits are hard. Countless airport fashion guides online give us near-impossible style rules: you need to look put-together, but not like you tried too much; you should be comfortable, but not so casual that you look like a lazy American when you land.
I decided on an oversized white Calvin Klein T-shirt, selected from the men’s section of my local Goodwill, and loose-fitting brown sweat shorts from Brandy Melville, the one-size-fits-all- store that teenage girls love to hate. I had bought the shorts in eighth grade, and there was a hole forming on the left pocket..
“You look like a 12-year-old boy!” said Rachel, my friend wearing a denim skirt and a neatly tucked in blouse. I felt like a 12-year-old boy and had no complaints. I never thought of my clothing as unisex, but there was nothing distinguishing my outfit from what a male classmate might have worn for an elementary P.E. class.
People have blurred gender boundaries through clothing for as long as they’ve challenged gender roles. Often, the force behind this effort has been the conviction that clothing has no gender, that preconceived notions of what men and women should wear shouldn’t stop us from pursuing a utilitarian, practical view of fashion.
It’s clear that Gen Z is in favor of this view. In college classrooms and Instagram reels, everyone is wearing unisex T-shirts and sweatpants. It’s easy to blame the rise of athleisure and comfortable clothes on America’s laziness epidemic, but much more interesting to think about a world in which garments are separated from their gendered associations.
Movements in clothing are reflections of what we want the world to look like, yet the reason for embracing genderless clothing remains ambiguous to whom? A lot of unisex clothing (Uniqlo’s basics line, for example) is essentially men’s clothing: unfitted, uncomplicated, and devoid of embellishments. Given the popularity of the collection, it stands to reason that women, when they have the choice to, want to emulate the qualities of men’s clothing. Does this mean unisex clothing represents a kind of male privilege that women simply cannot help by envy? Are we aiming for a world where men and women dress alike, inching us ever closer to gender equality?
It’s unsurprising that we owe much of unisex clothing’s development to suffragettes. Throughout American history, progressive women have used fashion to promote a break from traditional expectations. Why should women wear corsets and tight dresses instead of practical, loose-fitting pants?
This radical question first circulated mainstream in 1851 thanks to activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her neighbor, Amelia Bloomer. Stanton’s cousin, Elizabeth Smith Miller, had designed an ensemble that became known as a “bloomer outfit” (essentially, a skirt over a pair of loose trousers). In 1853, however, Stanton stopped wearing them out of fear that negative reactions to her fashion choices would hurt the suffrage movement. Bloomers had generated great praise from suffragettes, but ridicule from the press was far greater. Stanton wanted the public to hear her speak about the right to vote, and getting them to listen was harder when critics were focused on the trivial question of what she wore under her skirt.
Historically, writers and thinkers have disagreed on whether a world of unisex dress would be a good thing. Some argue that unisex clothing is empowering for women, while traditionalists argue that it makes women less feminine. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s stance is the former. In 1915, she published her own satirical novella, Herland, in the pages of her DIY magazine, and in 1979, it was published as a standalone book. Herland is a society composed solely of women who reproduce through parthenogenesis. They are free from war, conflict, and, of course, men. In this female utopia, women wear loose, knee-length tunics prioritizing practicality and comfort, complete with well-placed pockets.
Gilman didn’t believe that comfortable clothing required women to sacrifice style. The women in Herland do not abandon femininity, elegance, or beauty through their uniform of choice. In their outfits, they look radiant and at ease, characterized by a sense of “sparkling beauty,” as Gilman describes it. There is a wonderful assured confidence in their dress. It seems as though Gilman believes that when women are free from constraints, they choose to make beauty one of their virtues. They remain staunchly committed to good taste.
Anna Bowman Dodd, another American woman author who wrote about genderless clothing, took a stance very different from Gilman’s. In her 1887 novella The Republic of the Future, which is set in the imagined “New York Socialist City” of 2050, Dodd envisions a dystopia where men and women dress alike. The women, believing that the beauty of their sex leads to their slavery, equate beauty with shame. So, they make themselves unattractive with baggy, unflattering trousers. Dodd critiques the feminism of her generation’s liberals, mocking the idea that women should adopt men’s garments.
Congressman Matt Gaetz would agree with Dodd that feminists are ugly. In one of the most hated tweets of 2022, he complained about women opposing the Supreme Court’s choice to overturn Roe v. Wade: “How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely, microwave dinner with their cats, and no Bumble matches?” The idea that feminists cannot be beautiful has been used to deem them masculine, ugly man-haters ever since the fight for women’s suffrage. Targeted misogyny reflects the politics of a woman’s appearance and outward femininity.
Gilman, however, would likely oppose Gaetz. Through Herland, she challenges the stereotype that feminists should avoid expressions of beauty, a distorted perspective that women must become ugly to achieve equality. Feminists today still find themselves in conflict with the idea that embracing traditionally girly things is inconsistent with feminist values. Author and influencer Oenone Forbat has said that when first learning about the movement, she felt like choosing to wear makeup was in conflict with her identity as a feminist. The idea that advocates for equality of the sexes should refrain from wearing certain things is repressive and counterintuitive.
Is it possible to eliminate gendered gaze through unisex clothing, and is it worth trying? Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, founder of Commes des Garçons and Dover Street Market, has aimed to answer this question. Kawakubo’s unique approach, as witnessed in the 2017 Met Museum exhibit “Art of the In-Between,” embraces the concept of blurring imaginary borders through dichotomies such as fashion vs. anti-fashion and object vs. subject. Kawakubo seeked to shatter boundaries that she believes have been constructed, to “expose their artificiality and arbitrariness.”
Kawakubo insists that femininity does not influence her work, and both her brand name and the deliberately shapeless designs that eschew emphasis on the female form underscore a central theme of blurring gender lines. The brand name is inspired by Françoise Hardy’s song “Tous les garçons et les filles,” which translates to “All the boys and girls.” But despite how her perspective on the relationship between clothing and body fiercely resonates with postmodern feminism, Kawakubo claims to be a realist rather than a feminist.
This is a strange paradox. Kawakubo claims not to be influenced by femininity, yet her work clearly takes gendered perspectives into consideration. If her goal is to say that gender doesn’t matter in discussions about clothing, she has failed, and I say this as a devoted fan of Kawakubo. But maybe her goal is to confuse her audience, to ask the question of whether any of this matters. After all, when asked about her work, she said that “the meaning is that it has no meaning.” If confusion is her goal, she has succeeded.
Unisex clothing has this same nuance. A woman and a man wearing unisex clothing might be wearing the same clothes, but the interpretation of a garment varies based on the gender of its wearer. To be the woman dressing in unisex clothing is different from being the man wearing unisex clothing. In spite of our efforts to fuse “masculine” and “feminine” elements and challenge established norms, the gendered nature of clothing persists. It seems that for as long as men and women exist, clothing will be a statement on gender.
Maybe you’ve had the following dream. You’re in public, and suddenly you’re naked. There’s a reason this is a nightmare and not a good dream. But what if we were all naked? There would be no need to choose, nothing we should wear, nothing forcing us into any mold. No need to think about how we want to present our identity to the world, and to take responsibility for that choice. We think of choosing our outfits as a type of freedom, but it’s possible that we would be safer from outside perception if we all walked around naked. There are practical realities to consider, and also the fact that this would take out the joy and agency of dressing ourselves. It isn’t my ideal world.
Making, buying, and wearing unisex clothes doesn’t deconstruct gender, at least not on its own. The dismantling of gender norms can’t happen only through personal expression, because gender is so tied to how others perceive us. Clothing cannot and should not be the sole indicator describing femininity or masculinity. So wear unisex clothing if that makes you happy. As Gilman artfully tells us, dressing unisex doesn’t mean dressing ugly.
