Not only did London Fashion Week go digital this year, it went genderless – but what could that mean for fashion retail?
- Gender-neutral lines are becoming “increasingly appealing” to retailers and consumers following rise in demand for casualwear during the pandemic
- Luxury brands such as Burberry are championing “freedom of expression” and breaking with fashion traditions
- Schuh and Adidas have opened stores organised by item type and brand rather than gender
Traditionally, London’s fashion event of the year is reserved for womenswear, with menswear showcased in two separate biannual events in January and June.
Given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the regular Fashion Week scheduling was thrown out, with womenswear and menswear amalgamated into one online extravaganza.
Making the move to bring the shows into one presented the perfect opportunity to redefine the fashion norms and shine the spotlight on the potential for a genderless fashion future. Men donned tuxedos with pops of pink tulle, while androgynous models sported leather midi skirts coupled with tailored blazers.
As designers were not limited to simple catwalk shows, some opted to create short films encapsulating the essence of their collections. Saul Nash produced a video about his experiences of homosexuality, while Kaushik Velendra enlisted the help of several queer and non-binary celebrities to explain their relationship with fashion.
London Fashion Week 2021 broke down the barriers of what is ordinarily expected with optimism for the new post-lockdown world guiding the freedom of the designs, and inclusivity the buzzword of the day.
But what could this year’s genderless drive mean for high street retailers and how they plan their collections?
Redefining gender neutral
Throughout the last few years, retailers such as Zara, H&M and Asos have dabbled with gender-neutral apparel – limited ranges designed to fit all body types, including baggy jeans and T-shirts.
Asos was the first to launch a meaningful move into that area with its Collusion range in 2018, while John Lewis removed all gender labels from its childrenswear department in 2017 but has not extended the policy to other categories.
GlobalData analyst Gemma Boothroyd says while they are yet to reach the mainstream, gender-neutral lines are becoming “increasingly appealing” to retailers and consumers, particularly given the spike in demand for casualwear during the pandemic.
“There has been the rise of athleisure, more neutral pieces that are relaxed, which is a pretty perfect environment for gender-neutral apparel to thrive,” she suggests.
“We’ve seen styles on the whole veer away from bold flashy prints in favour of more versatile, functional pieces and that’s what gender-neutral collections aim to be.”
“We haven’t really been specifying our collections to a particular gender for a while now. We want to make our work accessible to a broad audience and expand on our tailoring shapes to reflect that”
Bethany Williams
If retailers are to truly challenge gender norms, they would need to break down barriers between menswear and womenswear to create an inclusive shopping experience – something reflected in the designs on London Fashion Week’s catwalks.
Burberry, for example, cancelled its womenswear show and displayed an amalgamation of clothing for both genders on its menswear runway.
Models in leather skirts, trench coats and floppy hats were broadcast virtually from the luxury retailer’s Regent Street store, upending fashion norms.
Burberry chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci says its Escape range was designed to champion “the freedom of expression” and break with traditional menswear archetypes.
Designer Harris Reed has also made headlines this year – his designs have been worn by Ezra Miller, Solange and Harry Styles in his Vogue cover shoot.
Reed’s debut collection, ‘For Now, Unexplained’, follows a similar path to Styles’ outfit – tuxedo suits with tulle skirts and bright colours.
Elsewhere, Bethany Williams debuted a unisex coat collection that is being sold in Selfridges.
“We haven’t really been specifying our collections to a particular gender for a while now,” Williams told The Independent.
“We want to make our work accessible to a broad audience and expand on our tailoring shapes to reflect that.”
Genderless shopping experiences
The difficulty for retailers lies in how to best present products as genderless to their customers, though some are already experimenting with how they do that in a physical environment. Both Adidas and Schuh have opened gender-neutral formats, for instance, where customers are encouraged to shop by style choice as opposed to gender.
The Adidas concept store, which opened in London’s Soho last October, presents its products by the sport they are designed for, or by the collection they were released in.
Similarly, Schuh’s TwentyTwenty format, which launched on Oxford Street at the start of last year, organises items by brand rather than gender, following feedback from its 16-to-24-year-old target audience.
Schuh has been placing more emphasis on “having a genderless appeal” over the last few years, starting with its Schuh Kids standalone stores, and moving into its most recent format.
“Our brand aesthetic has been created to have genderless appeal, with the colour palette and font purposefully selected,” Schuh chief marketing officer Alice Cleary says.
”All talent featured in brand campaigns is also diverse to ensure inclusivity. All of the visual merchandising in our standalone kids stores is gender-neutral as we merchandise by brand. Additionally, we removed any artwork that referenced the traditional boy/girl aesthetic and updated everything to be gender fluid.
“The perception of Schuh as a genderless retail environment was reinforced by store exit poll and brand surveys to gauge the appeal across genders.
“We are on a journey and, over time, we will review the whole store merchandising experience across the wider estate where practical, as it is critical to still ensure intuitive navigation for the consumer.”
Schuh’s store offers an example of what could be achieved, but the genderless trend has yet to truly cement itself in how fashion retailers design their stores and collections.
“Online this is more of a challenge because marketplaces are growing in leaps and bounds in terms of their inventory. To navigate through that, if there aren’t clearly defined categories, that will be a challenge for the shopper”
Gemma Boothroyd, GlobalData
The challenge is even more difficult for retailers when it comes to their digital channels, where tens of thousands of SKUs are available.
“When you’re shopping online, categorically when you enter a website, you have to choose between menswear and womenswear – you’re automatically making that distinction,” Boothroyd explains.
“I can see how, in physical retail, there could be more of a blurred line and being more combined as you have the ability to visually see everything available as you walk through the store. You’ll be able to navigate through the store and see what draws your eye.
“Online this is more of a challenge because marketplaces like Boohoo and Asos are growing in leaps and bounds in terms of their inventory. In order to navigate through that, if there aren’t these clearly defined categories, that will be a challenge for the shopper.”
While the experience of shopping online without binary categories could be difficult for consumers, one way to break down boundaries between menswear and womenswear would be to use models of all genders to showcase clothes online, much like Burberry’s catwalk at London Fashion Week.
Schuh is launching a new hub on its website later this year under Mx – the title given to people who do not wish to use traditional titles like Mr, Mrs or Miss.
Such a move could be replicated on other websites to offer a clear gender-neutral section alongside traditional men’s and women’s categories.
The popularity of Asos’ Collusion unisex range indicates customers are keen to shop in this way. The label was searched for 7.1 million times last year and sold 1.5 million T-shirts, 760,000 tracksuits and 100,000 pairs of ‘dad’ jeans.
Despite growing awareness and demand among consumers, most high street chains approached by Retail Week declined to comment on their genderless fashion plans. It suggests that, for the time being, a meaningful shift into unisex clothing is not at the top of their strategic agendas.
But if London Fashion Week’s track record of driving trends from catwalk to high street is anything to go by, retailers will need to adapt to fashion’s new rules – or lack thereof – if they are to keep pace with consumers’ gender-neutral expectations.
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