Zara’s Ungendered Line
For this learning portfolio assignment we had to pick an advertisement for a fashion brand and explain how gender is portrayed through the clothing, models, etc. I decided to go with Zara’s Ungendered line, since it was the first thing that popped into my head while i was doing the readings. When I found out Zara had come out with this line, I thought, and still believe it was a huge step forward for non-binary acceptance. Finally, some brands are creating entire collections of products meant to appeal to any consumer, regardless of gender. Our reading, “Fashion and Cultural Studies” by Susan B. Kaiser mentions how we were ‘guided’ to automatically associate “pink is girl” and “blue is boy”, and I find it amazing how now, we’ve come to a point where, yes it is still being developed, but a gender neutral ‘label’ is coming to surface, specially through fashion. Personally, i strongly feel that the question of gender in fashion is helping to put the light on a broader cultural question and it feels like there is progress in that sense. As much as it seems like it’s a very ‘easy’ thing to do; creating a gender neutral clothing line, i think its quite hard and much more complex than women’s wear of men’s wear. There is a fine line between male and female, and creating a “gender neutral” line involves blurring that line and moving way forward the stereotypes of gendered fashion design, or design in general. Yes, it is the first step, but many people might still say it shouldn’t even be titled as “gender neutral”, it should just be an idea of making clothing that embraces all bodies and that can be shareable with everybody, despite all their differences.
To me, this is such an interesting subject/topic that truly reflects how our society is very slowly, but very surely evolving.
