Agendering

“Agender” is a word I’ve been pondering for a while now, spurred by Selfridges’ seasonal project, which kicked off last month, with a set of conceptual windows and in-store space designed by the brilliant Faye Toogood.  From the perspective of Selfridges – a mainstream department store, Agender seeks to strip away conventional gender separation whereby women head to the womenswear department and men head to the menswear floor.  “For us, Agender is not about harnessing a ‘trend’ but rather tapping into a mind-set and acknowledging and responding to a cultural shift that is happening now.  Through Agender, we’ve changed the context of shopping in store and online; by removing gender codes, our shoppers will be free to make choices based purely on personal taste.” said Selfridges creative director Linda Hewson.

What Agender has set in motion is the official sanction that arguably a large swathe of the fashion customer has been shopping this way for a very long time.  Selfridges may have given it a memorable catch-all name but you could say that men and women have been dipping into each other’s departments long before.  Machine-A for instance in London Soho has been championing this idea that men and women can shop fluidly without the need for labelled rails.  I’ll head in there and not even think about whether a piece is menswear or womenswear.  Your eye is drawn to the aesthetic first and foremost and then you worry (or in my case, not worry as I rarely try things on in dressing rooms) about fit later.  Same goes for their Stateside sort of-ish equivalent VFiles.  And going further back, longer standing stores like Opening Ceremony and Dover Street Market have also done their part in encouraging an aesthete-driven way of consuming fashion.  That is, to see a piece of clothing and go for it without concerns for its gender label.

In London perhaps, this blur is perhaps even more apparent as the spate of young menswear designers have seen women taking to their designs as much as men (hence why a number of them have also forayed into womenswear).  In their collective move away from traditional tailoring and into styles that can easily fit all – sportswear inflected pieces that don’t require perfect fit and outerwear that cocoons rather than tapers to the body – you end up seeing both men and women flag waving for their favourite LC:M designers.  Craig Green’s much lauded S/S 15 collection has been bought by both men and women in equal measure – with the overall message being that the collection was seminal and good enough to sway both sexes.  Good is good, whatever gender it’s purportedly intended for.  When you have a new generation of stylists and editors adept at mixing menswear seamlessly with womenswear on both sexes in magazines like  i-D and Dazed to name but a few – that only adds to the idea that there’s this to-and-fro fluidity in editorials, on the streets and in stores.

Wearing Tigran Avetisyan top from Machine-A, Craig Green trousers, Prada sandals

Wearing Eo To To jacket, Marni top, Cottweiler shorts from Machine-A and Pennant sandals

Wearing Kit Neale x Noel Stewart cap, Nicopanda top and matching shorts, Sacai waistcoat underneath and Prism espadrilles

Selfridges have made a valiant effort at kickstarting this conversation so that it hits the mainstream.   Toogood has created a space that immerses a customer in a way that feels extreme and deliberately brutalist.  “I chose to give the space the feel of an archive to reflect the curatorial decisions that go into any fashion edit. By removing branding, gender differences and merchandising, we allow the garments to speak for themselves.  The materials used in the Agender houses – concrete, horsehair, rubber – have a primal, raw feel. It’s about trying to pare back the superficial layers of polish and branding, and by doing so reveal something that is innate,” said Toogood.  Garments are hidden away in unbranded bags and boxes.  Mannequins are removed entirely from the windows, where clothes are used in a way to construct sculptures and as a viewer, you end up objectifying them on their own without any engendered context.

All this stripping away though does call into question whether the term “Agender” itself has its own pre-scribed aesthetic.  Are we really getting to a truly gender-less place where men and women are free to choose as they please when the styles of clothing themselves are so pared back.   When you look at the actual selection of clothes themselves, you find yourself slightly limited by a monochrome selection of sportswear, military-inspired pieces, trainers, bomber jackets, blazers and trench coats.  Whilst Selfridges say they’re not adhering to simplistic notions of androgyny, many of the pieces that are available to buy within Agender do adhere to conventions of that – minimal, oversized and often utilitarian in feel.

 

Selfridges’ Agender look book and product selection:

“In the 21st century we’re increasingly aware that gender is not a binary, and the way we choose to present ourselves as individuals shouldn’t be constrained by the artificial divisions of society or commerce.”  Those are salient words from Toogood and yes, Agender goes some way to presenting a potential retail/fashion future where we no longer require womenswear and menswear rails.  But on an aesthetic level, we still have some way to go whereby we propose a true diverse array of styles that are free of gender codes.  Within this masked-up, concrete-blocked and metal-meshed space, can we allow for whimsy, colour and more idiosyncratic personality to flourish so that both sexes can partake in say… Raf Simons’ sheer floral shirts.  Or Meadham Kirchhoff’s pieces that I’ve seen being rifled through by both boys and girls.  Or Nicopanda’s ruffled pieces in baby pink AND blue.  That in itself is a very significant divider of clothing that starts from infancy and informs our ideas of what boys and girls are supposed to wear, and Nicola Formichetti plays with that heartily for his first collection for his solo label.  Selfridges went for the all-black pieces from Nicopanda, counter balanced by white stripes courtesy of labels like Off-White and UEG.  When worn in the e-commerce images by a counterpart male and female model, the visual effect is that of a blank-staring army.  Is the true incarnation of the word “Agender” really about being so black and white?  I’m not so sure.