At 2016’s New York Fashion Week, inclusion was en vogue.
From Thursday, Feb. 11 to Thursday, Feb. 18, NYC runways featured models decked out in the fashion world’s latest creations. But more important than the accessories was what the extravagant clothing lacked: gendered distinctions and whitewashed faces.
The fashion world has finally stopped letting the sexual and racial politics of its craft decide its future.
But high fashion shouldn’t corner the market on social progress. Even if you can’t afford the threads, you should embrace the message that nobody needs to fit a particular box in order to feel confident in their appearance.
How we cover our bodies is a deeply political decision. It isn’t simply about looking cute or cool. Clothing is about presenting yourself in the way you feel most comfortable, whether that is with a dress, tuxedo or mesh bodysuit with matching platform shoes.
Those decisions are wound up in cultural expectations of beauty and presentability, so making them is often easiest for white people who identify within the male-female binary. Individuals who identify otherwise are surrounded by stores that try to tell them where men or women are supposed to shop to look respectable.
Many models walking the catwalks during NYFW escaped these boundaries, though, and nobody got hurt. Nobody fled from fashion shows because they couldn’t emotionally handle the fact that a model projecting as male was also wearing heels on the Hood by Air runway. And NYFW became part of a larger march away from stereotypes within the clothing industry.
In December, Tom Ford rolled out a new series of his Lips and Boys line, which features lipstick for men, and last month, Louis Vuitton announced that Jaden Smith would be one of the faces for its womenswear catalog. At pop star Rihanna’s “Fenty x Puma” show during NYFW, the focus was on non-gendered streetwear. Rain Dove, a woman who models clothing collections for all genders, dominated the catwalks of Boyswear and three other menswear shows during New York Men’s Fashion Week. She has gained attention across the internet on sites, such as Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post.
Listen to the runway: Gender boundaries are simply out of style.
Progress in fashion isn’t only about embracing ambiguity, though — it includes breaking down the categories that make androgyny seem so radical.
Fashion icon Marc Jacobs’ newest collection featured clothes targeted at women, but Jacobs designed his pieces to look oversized and take up space. It was a clear rejection of norms that women appear slight or stay out of the way, and similar approaches appeared on runways for DKNY, Zero+Maria Cornejo and Coach.
Certain colors and garments have historically belonged to certain groups. We’ve all heard it before: Pink is for girls and suits are for boys. Once we move past such arbitrary gender distinctions, we open ourselves up to new worlds of creativity and experimentation.
Even more arbitrary than the gendered boundaries of the fashion world, though, are the racial ones that surround model casting. This year’s NYFW featured models from across the ethnic spectrum — a welcome change from the mostly white catwalks of the past.
Designer Zac Posen featured 25 multiracial women during his NYFW show on Monday, and posted an Instagram photo of him with a bag asserting “Black Models Matter.”
Lamine Kouyaté, designer for XULY.Bët, planned to hire only black models for his event. The designer fell slightly short of his goal, as Kouyaté’s publicist told The New York Times, “There still aren’t that many black models at the agencies, and the ones that there are tend to be inexperienced. They haven’t had an opportunity to walk in many shows.”
If the problem is that too few non-white models have experience, the solution seems simple: Hire more of them. Respecting and embracing the contributions of all races to modern fashion only expands the industry: A Japanese musician inspired Jacobs’ gender-defying collection.
Multi-cultural influences are nothing new, and now it’s time for the representation to follow. While there are still significant issues surrounding body shape and size representation, we are moving in the right direction.
If there’s one fashion week trend we should all hop on, it’s that conformity is so last year. Accepting someone, regardless of who they are and how they dress, is all the rage.