Image source: Virginie Khateeb (photographer), “Meet the boys leading Margiela’s gender revolution”, Dazed Magazine, http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/26770/1/meet-the-boys-leading-margiela-s-gender-revolution

There is an interesting phenomenon in fashion haute couture – it has been all about women, and to express femininity through those highly expensive, luxuriously ornated and complicatedly conctructed gowns. There are no couture shows for menswear or male models. After being fired from Dior, John Galliano took over Maison Martin Margiela and presented a revolutionary runway on Paris Spring/Summer haute couture show 2016. By sending down three male models on the runway, he made a resounding statement of gender blurring and gender transformation. Dressed in skin-exposing garments, covered in silver eye-makeup, and adorned with jewelry, the male models’ presence was nearly undetected. By doing this, Galliano gave us the idealized femininity that the fashion industry desired – tall, pale and skinny, and broke the restrictions to females. As Kaiser stated in her book Fashion and Cultural Studies, “Transgender studies remind us that gender is not fixed in clothes; instead, symbols and meanings of gender float across appearances and contexts” (Kaiser 2012, 131). Galliano discarded the usual views of gender in clothes; he took fashion to a higher level where identities and beauty are not defined by the basic boy/girl division.