Tipping Point: Fashion Brands, Schools and Stores Navigate Shifting Gender Norms
By Miles Socha
Fashion’s future is gender-neutral: Fashion’s distribution channels, including digital, are not there yet.
“There has been a significant move away from traditional women’s wear toward men’s wear/unisex, sportswear and less gendered fashion,” agreed Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster in London. “This has been driven in part by students not wishing to impose ideas on who or how their garments are worn, presenting them as ‘proposals’, consciously moving away from the dated notion of the designer as an autocrat.”
Yet the creative bubble of fashion school and the working world is something else, according to Groves.
While students at Westminster are free to create gendered or nongendered fashions, students’ perceptions “radically change once they go on internships. It is startling how many say they want to switch to men’s wear when they realize how much more collegial and supportive the men’s wear industry is in comparison to women’s wear,” he said.