The world of fashion has always been full of ideas and messages that have the potential to challenge our society and change the world. Christian Dior’s New Look revolution, which introduced the original Mini-skirt, is such an example; it gave women independence and freedom, and breathed a breath of fresh air into a depressed, post-war society.
More recently, however, these innovative and creative ideas have only inspired mess and controversy. Recently, most notably in the past two years, workers in the fashion industry have been witnessing important changes to the traditional ideas of gender identities. Fashion designers are starting to wonder what it really means to be male or female. We are used to identifying someone’s gender according to his/her clothes, adhering to strict and rigid categories - such as skirts and the colour pink for females, and baggy trousers and the colour blue for males. Luckily some loose cannons in the fashion world are slowly and silently upsetting our usual habits and traditional ways of thinking about fashion: he is she and she can be both or neither.
Genders have become more fluid in recent years, but whilst this initially meant that women got to experience more freedom to adopt men’s “customs” and “practices”, dressing the other way round - that is, men dressing and acting more like women - is surprisingly still met with consistent resistance. Why is this? The answer could sadly be a simple one: male gender is still considered the stronger, while the female is subconsciously thought of as the weaker. Generally speaking, a woman who becomes more like a man is upgrading herself, a man who becomes more like a woman is unforgivably downgrading. Getting rid of these stereotypes is hard for a woman, but impossible for a man. Machismo is not only the base of sexism, but of homophobia too.
When Alessandro Michele took over Frida Giannini as Gucci’s creative director and he presented his first show for menswear last year, the majority of people were upset and surprised: men with lace shirts, bows, long hair,
androgynous looks and make-up, wearing pink and floral patterns.
In Italy, the famous comedian Luciana Littizzetto mocked some of Michele’s outfits in one of her sketches, accusing him of having run out of menswear ideas (saying that he “non sa più cosa inventarsi”). Thus, rendering the revolutionary work of the new creative director as eccentric and abnormal. Michele responded by thanking Littizzetto for giving him a reason to laugh, and honoured her with a beautiful bunch of flowers. Evidently, the trick is not take yourself too seriously.
Naturally, this fashion revolution being undertaken at Gucci worries conformists who, especially in fashion, adhere to antiquated conventions and norms. At the end of day, though, we should find nothing particularly strange in all of this this: new ideas upset the balance and this is evident not only on the catwalk but also on the front covers of magazines, in the operating room (such as the in case of Caitlyn Jenner) and even in the world of politics. In fact, the incumbent Renzi government has been discussing so-called Gender Theory for quite some time. If this issue reaches the realm of Italian politics, it has arguably become mainstream. As Michele put it so eloquently: “freedom, indeed, is the thing that gives back our beauty”. Even to men in dresses.
cultura
GENDER FLUIDITY:
FROM GUCCI TO POLITICS
Cristiano Varolo
Gucci's designer: Alessandro Michele