Degendering Fashion - Alok Vaid-Menon

WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

Why does so much fashion still cling to strict men's and womenswear codes? Is the industry finally ready to shake off tired old binaries and embrace the trans and gender-nonconforming community? Or is Harry Styles' Vogue cover about as far as it goes?

For this week's #sharethepodcastmic episode, sustainable fashion journalist Aditi Mayer is in charge.

She's interviewing Alok Vaid-Menon about their new book, Beyond the Gender Binary. Alok is a gender-nonconforming poet, author, performance artist and designer.

Up for discussion: everything from gender neutral fashion, to the limitations of representation to what it means to truly redefine beauty. Also, fashion has been largely silent on the rising wave of transphobia, says Alok, yet continues to draw inspiration from gender-nonconforming people.

This episode is a powerful call to designers "take it as an ethical imperative to de-gender their lines" and to "everyone, regardless of your gender, to make this an issue."

It's time for all of us to start asking difficult questions, say Alok. "Asking our favourite brands, our favourite designers: why do you continue to gender your product? What is the purpose of this? The next piece is, how are we subverting gender tropes in our own lives? Are we dressing to fit an idea of what women or men should be, or are we dressing for ourselves?"

Here's Aditi on Instagram.

Find Alok on their website here.

Find all the notes https://thewardrobecrisis.com/podcast

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