Androgynous high fashion

[Catechin]

Androgynous high fashion has always interested me. Usually there are some (often exceptionally strange) ensembles that defy categorization on the monthly fashion catwalks. I pay special attention when the articles of clothing are something other than simply mixing male and female articles of clothing. Androgyny is always in style and can be used by all gender groups, but some decades it is at the forefront of fashion sense. Be it glam, mix & match, or specific genres like scene, j-rock, gothic or punk aesthetic.

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org ... wear-heels

The above fashion show interested me in how uniquely unisex the cuts were. They were genderless and simultaneously futuristic and timeless, and of course black. Like the author, I think more male bodied people should wear heels too. High heels were invented for/by French noblemen after all. Does anyone else have any recommendations or thoughts on androgynous or neutral high fashion collections or designers, past or present?

[Ryles]

But maabs are tall enough, they don't need heels. D: Especially models! (although the height of assumed-female models compared to assumed-males in respect to the height of faabs and maabs in general says a lot about the fashion industry)

I'm still annoyed that Stefán Karl wore heels in Glanni Glæpur. 6'4. I'd need 14 inch heels just to be as tall as him. Why would you add platforms to that? -_-


More seriously- it's an interesting idea... But I don't really know how to feel about it. I can't see anyone wearing any of that in daily life.

That is, the heels come with a certain form of legibility: they are read as high fashion in the hot neighborhood, but they might be misread as "too gay" someplace else.

[ajasen]

what was also interesting to me was that for the most part (there was at least one case where I wasn't sure), the gait/walking-styles used by the models seemed to fit stereotypically gendered catwalk movements. Even though the clothing & especially makeup was a bit less binary, I felt the body mechanics of the models mostly fell one way or the other.

I think that there's a cultural intersection between presentation and viewer that determines the line between "androgyny" and "crossdressing". Get too butch or too femme and it's read as crossdressing. I personally like pushing the boundaries of femme "crossdressing" presentation into androgyny:

random: http://www.styleguru.org/gallery/bmg11_7881/
marc jacobs: http://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/gender-confused-fashions-androgyny-cross-dressing
femme androgyny: http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/35287
more femme androgyny: http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/34737/1
even more!: http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/72895

[adverdelex]

Picking a new suit is never an easy task; there's the cut, the fabric and the quality all to worry about. Though men's fashion trends change at a slow pace, and suits slowest of all, 2009 and 2010 will see a major move away from the monochromatic skinny-boy suit to something a lot more masculine and adventurous.

[Heka]

I've been wanting a good pair of heels for awhile now.

With the walks, I think that has a bit to do with how the models have been trained generally. No matter what clothes you put on them, they are still gonna walk down the runway the way they have practiced umpteen times in the past.

[Psychopomp]

Yeah, that model walk is a learned thing and it's very hard to do.