Advertisement

Designers are releasing unisex collections, but do they really fit a woman's body?

Paris Fashion Week  - Getty Images
Paris Fashion Week - Getty Images

A week ago, a man I’m dating asked me to wear his jeans. We were at his flat and he wanted to take his motorbike out to a pub on the other side of London, but refused to let me sit on the back of it in the pale-blue silk skirt I’d been wearing all day. Reluctantly I agreed, but his bulky black jeans bulged in all the wrong places, made my legs look terrible – and let’s not even talk about my bottom. We made it to the pub but my mood was less buoyant than it would have been had I worn my own clothes.

So when I heard that many of my favourite designers were releasing genderless collections this season, my heart sank. I’m all for breaking the taboos of the past, but I have hips, and I couldn’t see how clothes designed to fit a male body would be anything other than unflattering.

Stella McCartney is probably the best-known brand pushing the unisex aesthetic this year, the impetus for which comes not only from the current, gender-norms-testing culture, but from McCartney’s achingly cool childhood, and an early skills set she wanted to put to use.

“While my collections have always been an effortless dichotomy of feminine and masculine energy, inspired by my parents’ shared wardrobe growing up and my training on Savile Row, today’s youth are naturally open-minded and fluid with gender,” she told The Telegraph.

“I think it’s beautiful how they inclusively celebrate individuality and diversity, and are using their self-expression to affect social change. I love how they approach life and style with an activist perspective, whether it be tearing down the male/female binary or demanding sustainability from brands, and this is so aligned with our values.”

It is all very 2020, slotting perfectly into an era where designers are questioning whether men and women’s collections should even be shown separately anymore. Margaret Howell has overlap pieces this season and at their London Fashion Week presentation, the team spoke about how the men’s and womenswear designers were regularly inspired by one another. Lee Jeans is releasing a unisex capsule collection next year and Ijji – an entirely genderless brand – has just expanded its offering to include trenchcoats and work jackets.

Shoes Paris Fashion Week - Getty Images
Shoes Paris Fashion Week - Getty Images

Rejina Pyo, who has released a series of genderless shirts this season, says her designs came on the back of demand from her customers, who kept spotting pieces in opposite sex collections and asking for them to be made in their size. At Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks earlier this year, influencers also pushed the genderless aesthetic hard.

The theory is great, but does it flatter anyone who isn't photographed for a living? To see for myself, I borrowed a couple of items and test drove them on a rare trip to the office.

I started with a navy blue Stella McCartney suit and was surprised to find it looked good. Really good. The waistband of the trousers sat just above my hips and the material was cut so it skimmed over my bottom and thighs with no unnecessary bulk. The legs were wide, but not too wide – although being tall no doubt helped as they ended just below my ankles rather than in a puddle on the floor.

I’ve got quite narrow shoulders, and yet the jacket also fitted better than I expected it to, particularly with one button done up and the sleeves pushed to my elbows. I wore it with nothing underneath, which helped soften the look, as a collared shirt might have been a little too masculine.

Despite the unisex label, I had been wondering if the suit was still cut on a bias so I asked a male colleague to try it on too. It worked just as well on him  and he even used the word ‘empowered’ as he walked around the office wearing it over a white shirt. What I wanted to know was how McCartney managed it.

“I trained on Savile Row in men’s tailoring while I was at Central Saint Martins,” she said, “so I learned the technical skills, and tailoring has been a core category for us in both our women’s and men’s lines. I just wanted a relaxed fit that feels effortless for all sexes. Our clothing has always playfully, rebelliously, riffed on the dichotomy between masculine and feminine energies, and this capsule refreshed it.”

Paris fashion week suit - Getty Images
Paris fashion week suit - Getty Images

None of the other pieces I tried worked quite so well. I did like a couple of the jumpers, but there was nothing remarkable or inventive about them in a year where most knitwear is slightly oversized. The same was true of the short and long-sleeved shirts we tried on, which I would buy small and wear with slim fit trousers, but which I wouldn’t necessarily seek out over something from the women’s collections. Some of the looser trousers and jeans, meanwhile, were actively unflattering.

For truly unisex clothes (rather than just boyfriend cuts still designed for a woman's body) to work, they need to be beautifully cut, ideally by someone trained in the art of tailoring. In the end, however much we say gender is a construct, it is difficult to make clothes that fit our very different bodies equally well. Still, the Stella McCartney suit with its clean lines and slim cut kept coming back to me. I hope I'll never have to wear a pair of men’s jeans again, but I wish I could have kept the suit: it would have been the perfect outfit to wear next time I’m invited on the back of a motorbike.

For more news, analysis and advice from The Telegraph's fashion desk, click here to sign up to get our weekly newsletter, straight to your inbox every Friday. Follow our Instagram @Telegraphfashion