Antigender Fashion: JW Anderson and Gender-fluid Fashion

Abstract

This article focuses on the incorporation of non-binary fashion in contemporary fashion design. Expanding on what Vicki Karaminas and Justine Taylor coined antigender fashion, this study investigates how contemporary fashion design can challenge and critique norms of gender identities and their representation. Taking different forms of anti-fashion – which opposes and challenges fashion – as a blueprint, the article proposes antigender fashion as an active tool in opposing, confronting and challenging gender binaries. By scrambling the symbols of masculinity and femininity, antigender fashion offers the material and visual currency to express and embody the myriad ways that masculinity and femininity can be imagined, the moments of transgression and the moments in-between. Taking on a case-study approach, the study critically analyses JW Anderson’s antigender fashion in regard to its potential to trouble and proliferate gender and its visual representation through fashion. As a framework and design approach, antigender fashion contributes to the re-construction of identities and the crumbling dominance of heterosexuality and the gender binary. The study seeks to highlight the relevance of fashion in constituting and renegotiating contemporary forms of masculinities and femininities.

Keywords

• antigender fashion
• gender fluidity
• masculinities
• jw anderson
• british fashion