Pushing the Androgyny Boundaries

A silk blouse with its floppy pussy bow buttoned seductively up the back. A shrunken military jacket with sleeves that end slightly past the elbow, revealing dainty wrists. These were elements of the fall men’s collection at Gucci, where new creative director Alessandro Michele became the latest designer to propose overtly feminine clothes for men—his shown on a cast of wan, androgynous models who strolled out in fur-lined slippers. A flurry of coed shows in Europe’s main capitals this men’s wear season further helped blur the gender boundaries, both sexes donning scoopneck pinafore coats at Raf Simons; funnel-neck pea jackets and printed mohair cardigans at Giorgio Armani; austere black nylon uniforms at Prada, and high-heeled boots and demonstrative outerwear at Saint Laurent—including a pink mink for him. Meanwhile, in Florence as guest editor of the Pitti Uomo show, Hood by Air’s Shayne Oliver lived up to his reputation for deviant, gender-bending extremes. His models wore pantyhose crudely scribbled with eyebrows, obscuring their sex. The men wore high-heeled, square-toe platform clodhoppers and dresses slit to the crotch. The season raised a major question: Is fashion finally crossing over to some unisex utopia, or is androgyny nothing more than a flavor of the month designed to

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