SEPTEMBER 2019
VOGUE VIEWPOINT
98
Thesedesigners are democratising what it means
to get dressed to the hilt. Their ethos is simple:
elegance should be for all, so f lout gender norms and
let the pendulum swing where it may. By Jen Nurick.
KNOW NO
BOUNDS
CONSIDER THE CLICHE that money can’t buy you
style. If the truism holds, then style is a feeling dictated by
our gut or eyes and indulged by our wallets. When we drown
out the noise (shop assistants, friends and family, targeted
advertising), it all boils down to the law of attraction. We
gravitate toward clothes that feel good on our bodies, snub
the rest and suddenly we’ve managed to get dressed in an
unadulterated fashion vacuum. Or so we think.
In her 1990 bookGender Trouble,American philosopher
Judith Butler regarded gender to be performative: if we
repeat expected behaviours often enough we’ll believe them
to be normal and true. In fashion, this translates to slipping
on boyfriend jeans to feel a frisson of supposed masculinity,
or shopping in the women’s section, where we expect
dresses and skirts to find their natural home, resulting in a
gendering of style that short-circuits our own predilections.
Almost 30 years later, combined showings of men’s and
women’s ready-to-wear collections (led by Bottega Veneta,
before it passed the baton to Gucci) and the embrace of
gender-agnostic labels (see Vaquera, Palomo Spain) are
inching towards a new, non-binary dawn. No, this is not
the stuff of oversized hoodies and heavy sneakers, a look
that swings towards the bulky and hides the physique. A
new and inclusive style genre is bringing traditionally
feminine signifiers into the fold, welcoming long trailing
gowns, sparkling fabrics and frills happily into the mix.
For autumn/winter ’19/’20, Celine, Maison Margiela and
Balenciaga crystallised a return to bourgeois tastes without
the social politics. Call it egalitarian elegance. Following in
their footsteps, young designers mentored by the likes of
Jean Paul Gaultier, Alessandro Michele and Grace Wales
Bonner are tapping into their innermost impulses to rewire
the way we get dressed.
“These are the times we’re supposed to be creating pieces
that change the way people think, the way people feel when
they wear them,” says London-based designer Harris Reed,
23, whose Victoriana blouses and millinery worn and loved
by a diverse customer base have gone viral and earned Reed
an apprenticeship under Michele at Gucci.
After stylist Harry Lambert commissioned the then
Central Saint Martins student to create stage outfits for his
client Harry Styles, for the singer’s 2018 arena tour, Reed’s
opulent hats and shirting caught the attentions of Solange Knowles, Troye Sivan and
Ezra Miller, all performers, Reed acknowledges, who are helping to normalise
non-binary fashion in the public eye.
“I want to pioneer fluidity,” Reed says. To realise his vision, he balances old-world
glamour with the flamboyance of costumes, designing flared suits with hand-sewn
ostrich feathers or white French lace neck ruffs. It’s part fantasy and part
countercultural resistance to the unsustainable models of fast fashion that have
becomede rigueur. “The idea of bespoke pieces, really luxurious, fantastic pieces that
you can pass on ... I’m hoping that culture is coming back, where [the mother] can
give it to her son and her son to his trans daughter.”
This passing of clothes between hands is also the premise of Art School, a London-
based non-binary brand conceived by Eden Loweth and Tom Barratt, who are both
25, that emphasises collaboration and community. “Our focus is always: ‘How can
we bring in queer artists, queer collaborators to work on the collections with us?’ It’s
about trying to spotlight as many people as possible,” says Loweth, who developed
the idea with Barratt while they were working on their university showcase and also
interning for Wales Bonner. Starring in Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s campaigns (“We
came from a university generation below Charles”) also gave the designers a solid
grounding in fashion’s new guard.
Friends are cast as models, clothes are fitted on trans women and stockists are
given a guide explaining each collection (provided their stores do not have →