Pushing Gender Boundaries with J.W. Anderson

Derry-born Jonathan Anderson aims to create clothing and accessories that women can borrow from men and men can borrow from women, blurring the lines between menswear and womenswear. He has been daringly disregarding gender almost entirely for the last few seasons, succeeding in creating a 'shared' wardrobe for any gender to take from.

Anderson put his male models in glaringly girly printed halternecks for Spring/Summer 2013. For Autumn/Winter 2013 they were subjected to dresses, sleeveless tops and frill-cuffed shorts and boots. Spring/Summer 2013 saw a mens collection with lace shirts and trousers, asymmetrical coats in colours suck as cherry-red and Pepto-Bismol and hospital-scrub-like outfits in colours such as mint and lilac. This season, showcased on January 7 at London Men's Fashion Week, even included platform heels.

Anderson's menswear often looks like it belongs in a woman's wardrobe. Both his Men's and Women's collections tend to look like what typically happens when a designer decides to make their Women's collections look more masculine/androgynous. Purposefully and unapologetically, Anderson designs his Men's pieces so that they could easily fit into his collections for actually made for women.

J.W. Anderson showcased his womenswear Pre-Fall 2014 collection this Wednesday (January 15) in Paris. This time, it was particularly obvious that Anderson designs his clothes to be worn by anyone, regardless of gender. The Women's collection included some of the exact same pieces as the Men's. Oversized chunky knit jumpers were taken directly from the opposite sex's collection, with the only change being that for the ladies they were paired with ankle length skirts instead of calf-grazing trousers. A controversial move, maybe: Why bother showing the collections separately if they contain the same pieces? but that is a question that J.W. Anderson has likely asked of himself and of the fashion world a thousand times.