FEMINISM Gender equality and women’s rights is a topic that is always in the media and is even being seen on the catwalk through fashion. It is influencing designer’s collections on the catwalk and one brand in particular is Christian Dior.
Dior Autumn/Winter ready- to-wear fashion show, 2017
Maria Grazia Chiuri is now the luxury fashion house’s new and first creative director, which was announced in July 2016 (Holt, 2016) and has since shown the brand’s Autumn/Winter 2017 redy-to-wear collection. The clothing projects female clothing looking masculine, the collection has a lot of blue/navy, beret hats, blazer jackets and trousers. Maria Grazia Chiuri believes that blue is the colour of uniform and uniform speaks equality, so the models in the catwalk are wearing military inspired, navy clothing walking with a feminist attitude (Sheffield, 2016).
Dior Autumn/Winter ready-to-wear fashion show, 2017
Maria Grazia Chiuri has previously said in an interview “It is a sport for the heart and the mind and it brings men and women onto equal ground” (Menkes, 2017), she was explaining how her collection had taken inspiration from the sport fencing which is one of the few sports the uniform is the same for men and women. She has very strong beliefs of women’s rights and she shows this through fashion.
Dior Autumn/Winter ready-to-wear fashion show, 2017
The type of clothing that has been influenced by this topic is women’s tailoring or anything that is typically worn by a man to show women can be equal to men. Women’s tailoring has been seen many times on the catwalk by brands such as Celine, Yves Saint Laurent, Victoria Beckham and Stella McCartney.
CELINE
Celine Spring 2017 ready-to-wear fashion show
Zara released their collection in March 2016 which was available online and in 29 of their UK stores. Their collection consisted of unisex jeans, tees and sweatshirts, which are all in neutral colours and modeled by male and female models (Rodulfo, 2016). This collection had a lot of opinions as people were saying it was just clothing that didn’t have a specific gender audience anyway with the sweatshirts and tees, it wasn’t exactly skirts made for males (Sowray, 2016). Zara ungendered ad, 2016
Selfridges has also got involved with ‘genderless’ fashion by having a pop-up store within their store called ‘Agenda’. Agender means without a gender and lets customers shop without shopping for a specific gender (Tsjeng, 2015). The reason Selfridges decided to do this was because they said they had seen a huge surge in women buying menswear as the trend of looser clothing and a more masculine look became popular that year (London, 2015).
David Bowie, ‘Fashion fantasy’
This ‘fashion’ of genderless is also not a new thing as singer David Bowie did not dress by the expectations of his sex. He believed an outfit was never too much or ‘too queer’ and that you express yourself through what you wear (Tonic, 2016). So men/women wearing the other sex’s clothing is definitely not a new thing but fashion companies are now promoting it as ‘genderless’ rather than men’s clothing in the men’s section and women’s clothing in the women’s section.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Saint Laurent fall 2016 ready-to-wear fashion show
BIBLIOGRAPHY References 1. Bethan Holt, 2016 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/brands/everything-you-need-to-know-about-maria-grazia-chi uri-the-woman/ 2. Emily Sheffield, 30 September 2016, Vogue www.vogue.co.uk/shows/spring-summer-2017-ready-to-wear/christian-dior/ 3. Emily Menkes, 3 March 2017, Vogue http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/suzy-menkes-paris-autumn-winter-2017-christian-dior 4. Graeme Moran, 8 April 2016 https://www.drapersonline.com/product-and-trade-shows/genderless-fashion-a-fad-or-the-future/7006302.article 5. Kristina Rodulfo, 4 March 2016 http://www.elle.com/fashion/shopping/news/a34593/zara-genderless-clothing/ 6. Bibby Sowray, 7 March 2016 http://www.elleuk.com/fashion/news/a29718/zara-launches-unisex-gender-free-clothing-range-ungendered/ 7. Zing Tsjeng, 2015, Dazed Digital http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/24088/1/inside-selfridges-radical-gender-neutral-departme nt-store 8. Bianca London, March 2015, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3002605/As-celebrities-lead-trend-genderless-fashion-Selfridges-a xes-separate-women-menswear-departments-fa vour-three-floors-unisex-fashion.html 9. Gina Tonic, January 2016, Bustle.com https://www.bustle.com/articles/135046-13-of-david-bowies-most-androgynous-looks-because-these-outf its-will-inspire-us-for-generations
Illustrations Dior autumn/winter 2017 ready-to-wear fashion show – all retrieved from Vogue.com – (all illustrations from pages 1, 2 and 3) http://www.dior.com/couture/en_gb/womens-fashion/ready-to-wear/autumn-winter-2017-18-r eady-to-wear-show?gclid=CNG72PrB09ICF UITGwod7iEFag Celine fashion show 2017 – all retrieved from Vogue.com – (all illustrations from page 4) http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2017-ready-to-wear/celin e/slideshow/collection#15 Zara un-gendered collection advert, 2016 – retrieved through Google images - http://www.cp24.com/news/critics-say-zara-s-ungendered-line-plays-it-safe-but-enza-calls-it-apositive-step-1.2808896 David Bowie fashion, 2016 - https://blog.exclusively.in/2016/01/13/the-age-of-bowie/david-bowie-fashion-fantasy/ Saint Laurent fall 2016 fashion show– (all illustrations from page 6) – all retrieved from Vogue.com - http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2016-ready-to-wear/saint-laurent/slideshow/collection#20