22/4 Hommes Fall/Winter 2015

Stephanie Hahn once said that she would like to "liberalise fashion from the human genders". This is not a new concept and can in fact be traced back to 1966 when Yves Saint Laurent decided to put women in tuxedos and named it the Le Smoking. Fast forward down to the last decade; Mr Saint Laurent's successor, Stefano Pilati, incorporated feminine fabrics into his Spring/Summer 2009 men's collection and went ahead to create a capsule collection known as Edition Unisex. Most recently, JW Anderson has been another designer who wants to do away with the idea of gender. So what makes this German designer's version different enough to warrant some attention? The answer perhaps lies in the subtlety in which she has approached this vision. 

For her latest collection for 22/4 Hommes, Ms Hahn continued her quest to find the third sex by presenting a series of precisely tailored pieces with a significant number of them adorning fur inserts. Tailoring was the talk of the day here, and so was volume especially in the form of those tailored ponchos and loose fur coats. At the same time, she explored more fitted silhouettes with some of them belted around the waist while others were made to adapt to the body shape of the wearer. It was so avantgarde that it reminded me of some of the Belgian stars most notably Martin Margiela. In spite of this, it was also very accessible albeit not in an overtly commercial sense. What was interesting in this case was how she adapted these "neutral" pieces for both men and women. It wasn't simply a case of putting men's clothes on women but instead, there seemed to have been a middle line drawn where men were placed to the right of it, and women to the left. It was from this middle line that the pieces were then adapted to the different genders. For men, the clothes possessed a great deal of masculinity and for women, they conveyed a modern form of femininity.

There was a rebellious attitude present here just in the same way the Saint Laurent woman of the 1960s was. However, this rebel wasn't a radical one but was in fact conservative to an extent, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. The concept of gender neutrality, while old, is still a progressive one and to make it work, there needs to be some regression to balance it so that it goes at the same pace as human progression. This balance was demonstrated here today and is in my opinion, a terribly winning formula. 

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photos: womens wear daily