Gender roles are changing. Slowely but they do! In particular Sweden is known for shaking up traditional ideas of male and female behaviour. Here porn movies can be feminist and men wish to breastfeed their children.
The world of fashion is usually an area that is characterised by a strong gendered division. However, there are indications that fashion finally also starts to be more open towards gender-neutral collections.
Typical women’s wear consists of dresses, skirts or high heels, which sexualise the body by underlining the female silhouette. Classical male clothing such as the suit symbolises money and power. However, when women started entering the labour market, especially the public sector, in the context of the 1960s revolutions designers such as Giorgio Armani or Coco Chanel invented a female variant of the suit.
Today it is not strange anymore if women wear pants or even a tie. However, if men want to try skirts, dresses or high heels people usually think they are gay, on the way to a costume party or crazy. This attitude is changing according to the Swedish ELLE and the German lifestyle magazine Tush. It will become more and more accepted that men adopt typical female clothing. From dress code to cross-dress?
That would be fantastic! Looking at Swedish fashion, there are at least tendencies for a more gender-neutral focus. The labels Cheap Monday and Acne currently belong to the country’s most successful fashion exports and design lots of unisex garments.
I see this development also in my personal life. My boyfriend and I often buy the same type of pants and if I consider my wonderful friend Niklas I see the perfect example of a style that is not associated with gender. His style is just fantastic, special and unique! I wish there were more people like him!
Picture: Ulrich Hartmann
Picture: Christian Kuhn
Picture: Vanessa Leißring
Picture: Yannik Willing
Interesting article. I wonder how much the clothing androgyny you mention is dictated by current trends. (Not to be mean, but you have a few spelling mistakes and a pronoun error … my boyfriend and I… not my boyfriend and me)
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ein netter Blog Marieke!
Du wirst es kaum glauben aber alle paar wochen schau ich hier immer rein!
Weiter so!
wollt ich ma gesagt haben!!
S
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Danke!
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For sure trends influence this clothing androgyny. I think it began with the increasing popularity of indie-music. And thanks for the correction
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Und sag mal weißt du nicht mehr wie man meinen Namen schreibt, du Nase?!
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Great Article!
Myself and my family moved here just over one year ago and it’s so hard to tell between genders to be quite honast i just love it where in england it’s sort of frowned upon here you’re welcome to wear anything and everything without stereotypes
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A very interesting article. Having lived all of my 60 years in Sweden I tend not to notice this. Unlike Kitty I don’t have any difficulties telling which gender people present. Be it female, male or whatever.
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If you’re a fan of Cheap Monday and glasses you should check out their new collection of Clairvoyant optical frames : http://www.cheapmonday.com/clairvoyant
Plenty of androgenous styling to be had here!
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They look fantastic! Thanks for the tip!!!
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It is one of the most fascinating features of Sweden – freedom of style. Freedom from socially constructed things attached to prejudices and stereotypes. These things are misleading but unfortunately are quite difficult to get rid of. I was studying in Sweden for two years and when returned back to my home country (Ukraine) discovered that ukrainians are so stubborn in not changing thier mind here.:( Now miss Sweden.
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Very nice article. I think slowly but surely the lines that define gender are being blurred. And I like that…
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Doch das weiss ich, aber Pelle nannte dich doch aufm Hurricane vor 3 Jahren Marieke!
Sollte ein kleiner Gag sein
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You argue that the reason women wear dresses is that it sexualizes them, while on the contrary, the reason why pants are restricted from women among the religious, Orthodox Jews and Muslims, is they feel pants sexualize women more than dresses, because it fits their figure more tightly (and men don’t have as much a figure to fit unless they’re wearing tight pants).
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Of course, it can be different in other cultural or religious contexts!
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aaah ok. ich nehm alles zurück!
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Life is an illusion. Live it as you wish.
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Think of Berlin, late 1920’s. Only the coming Nazi’s wear turbans.
Cover your ears. Cover your eyes. Dance faster.
Enjoy!
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Here in America we are so restrictive when it comes to gender. Binary. It’s sad. I am able to dress far more masculine than my boyfriend can dress feminine. He used to wear “clam diggers” as a teenager. They are a more masculine form of a Capri. Not feminine but not as baggy as Cargos. He wanted a pair this Spring and went on a fashion website to see if they are available for men. They are great for walking the beach. Not only are they not widely available in the U.S. but he incurred wrath on the discussion board for even suggesting men wear them. The women were more rabid than the guys about this. Women want gender freedom when it benefits them but they want to deny it to men. We are actually getting less “free” here in many subtle ways and this is a main one.
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Men’s fashion is slowly moving in the other direction. More men are wearing fitted T-shirts and even pencil pants, I see it a lot here in Trinidad where I live and no one considers them to be gay because it is understood as a style, not a reflection of their sexuality. And there are men’s capris. It takes time for change to be accepted and become the norm. Some time ago when men wore earrings on both ears it was a big “sissy problem,” but no one is complaining or judging now. It may not be too far from now when the men start wearing dresses and skirts made for their body shape, maybe even high heeled shoes too!
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I find mens fashion at best boring, and at worst tedious. I’m sure that the shops just store the winter/summer clothing rails out back and then wheel out last years gear come the new season! I’ve been suplimenting mens clothing with clothing from the womens dept for years – keeps me sane in a see if same-ness. What really anoys me is some of the recent fashions that were a prime target for making the cross over into mens wear never did. Boots worn over jeans, leggings and jeggings, long line t-shirts, long line checked shirts. These days i’ll wear what I please, and I find that people get used to it very quickly – I get the train to work, and what I wear no longer causes the same stir as it once used to. You’ve got to remember that women wearing trousers has only been common since the 60’s and was practically unheard of before the 2nd world war. That’s recent history. When I wear a skirt, it comes, by nessesity from the womens dept. when women wore trousers the 40’s/50’s, they came, by nessesity from the mens dept. Dispite the volume of nae-saying men/women who would prefer men to look like clones of one-another, change is coming… albeit at a snails pace! I’m in Scotland – I’ll have to visit Sweden!
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