A skirt has no gender. It’s a rectangle of fabric with a waistband. We invented the rules about who gets to wear it, which means we can un-invent them too, and watching fashion do exactly that has been one of the most genuinely exciting stories of the past few years.
I draw clothes for a living, and I can tell you that a garment on the page is just line and shadow. The gender gets added later, by us. 2023 made that more obvious than ever.
We’ve Been Here Before, Actually
The idea that gendered dress codes are ancient and natural falls apart the second you open a history book. Louis XIV wore heels, stockings, and more lace than a bridal boutique. Men in 18th-century Europe out-peacocked women routinely, until the so-called Great Male Renunciation drained menswear of color and ornament in the name of sober capitalism.
The 20th century spent decades clawing some of that freedom back. Marlene Dietrich scandalized Hollywood in a tuxedo in the 1930s. Yves Saint Laurent put women in Le Smoking in 1966 and got them banned from restaurants for it. Bowie wore gowns, Prince wore lace and heels, Jean Paul Gaultier sent men down the runway in skirts in the mid-1980s and never apologized. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum dedicated a whole exhibition, Fashioning Masculinities, to this longer history just last year, and the V&A framing was exactly right: the rigid menswear-womenswear split is the historical anomaly, not the rebellion against it.
So when someone scoffs that gender-fluid fashion is a new fad, the correct response is: compared to what, the 1950s? Pick a longer timeline.
The Moment It Went Mainstream
Something shifted in the past five years, and you can almost date it. Billy Porter’s velvet tuxedo gown at the 2019 Oscars. Harry Styles on the cover of Vogue in a Gucci dress in late 2020, which made certain commentators melt down so spectacularly that the dress arguably did more cultural work than any op-ed could. Brad Pitt promoting a movie in a linen skirt last year. Bad Bunny, one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, doing press in skirts and painted nails while topping every chart that exists.
These weren’t fringe figures. They were the most-photographed men alive, and the sky stubbornly refused to fall. Vogue treating Styles’s dress as a straightforward fashion story, rather than a controversy, told you where the wind was blowing.
And the institutional shift kept pace. Awards shows loosened dress codes. Red carpets became genuinely interesting again precisely because the menswear half stopped being a parade of identical black suits.
The Designers Doing the Real Work
Celebrity moments grab headlines, but designers build the actual wardrobe. A few who matter most right now:
Harris Reed has become the movement’s most visible young star, building demi-couture that splits the difference between Victorian tailoring and full glam, and was appointed creative director of Nina Ricci, showing a debut collection in Paris this spring. Reed talks about “fluidity” not as a marketing word but as the entire design brief, and the clothes back it up.
Telfar built one of the most beloved brands in America on the tagline “not for you, for everyone,” and means it. The Telfar shopping bag became a unisex status symbol without a single gendered campaign, proof that you can skip the whole boys-and-girls binary and sell out anyway.
Palomo Spain has spent years putting men in corsetry and silk with serious Spanish craftsmanship behind it. Ludovic de Saint Sernin designs from the body outward, for whoever the body belongs to. Rick Owens has never once cared what gender your tunic is. And Alessandro Michele’s seven-year run at Gucci, which ended just last November, arguably did more than anything else to make pussy-bow blouses on men feel like luxury rather than costume.
It’s a Business Story Too, Not Just a Cultural One
Follow the money and the picture gets even clearer. Retailers have been quietly merging departments and launching unisex lines because customers, especially Gen Z ones, increasingly shop by vibe rather than by section. Industry analysis at The Business of Fashion has repeatedly flagged gender-fluid design as a growth area that brands ignore at their own risk, and resale platforms report shoppers browsing across categories like the wall between them was never there.
That matters because fashion only changes permanently when the change sells. Tuxedos for women stuck because women bought them. Skirts and pearls for men are sticking for the same reason. Sentiment is lovely; sell-through is policy.
What This Means for Your Actual Closet
Here’s the part I care most about, because this blog has never been about runway theory for its own sake. Gender-fluid fashion isn’t a costume you put on. It’s a set of permissions you give yourself.
For women, the permissions came earlier, though they’re worth naming: the oversized blazer with nothing underneath, the men’s-department trouser that fits better than anything cut “for her,” the brogues, the boxy shirt. Borrowed-from-the-boys stopped being borrowed a long time ago. It’s just ours now.
For the men in your life, the frontier is wider and the social risk is real, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. A man in a skirt still gets stared at in most zip codes, including plenty of mine here in Miami. But every pearl necklace on a guy at a gallery opening, every painted nail at brunch, moves the line a little. Style courage is contagious.
And for everyone: stop letting the section sign tell you where to shop. Fit and feeling are the only two judges that matter. Some of my favorite pieces I’ve ever sketched on myself came from the “wrong” department.
The Stereotype Was the Costume All Along
The strangest thing about gendered clothing rules is how recent and how arbitrary they are. Pink was a boys’ color a century ago. Heels were cavalry equipment. The suit, that fortress of masculinity, was radical once too.
Fashion at its best has always known this. Clothes are a language, and gender norms are just one accent of it, not the grammar. The designers, pop stars, and ordinary brave people dragging fashion past the binary aren’t breaking the rules of dress. They’re reminding us that we wrote those rules in pencil.
Wear the rectangle of fabric. It was never asking for your ID.