The blurring of gender lines is nothing new in fashion. What is new is the broader, consumer-driven cultural conversation around gender and sexuality. Digital platforms have enabled marginalised people to form communities online, amplifying understanding of diverse viewpoints. Gender is now operating on a moving scale – consumers can use the scale as an expression on any given day. Generation Z Asia report found 8 out of 10 respondents say gender doesn’t define a person as much as it used to.
Source: MUJI
Japanese retail giant MUJI plans to realize that 50% of the clothing will be designed for men and women in the spring of 2022 at the earliest, with a total of almost 250 models. More importantly, this will be MUJI’s global strategy. In other words, if you randomly enter a MUJI store in the future, you will see more than half of the clothes, and there will be no gender distinction.
Avant-garde and genderless fashion has had a long heritage in Japan, pioneered by revered designers Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. Since 2016, Tokyo’s youth movement has been rejecting ideas of fashion defining sexuality through make-up, clothes and Instagram filters. Also, women in South Korea are rebelling with genderless fashion, cutting their hair and wearing no make up as a feminist protest against the patriarchal gaze.
Not only are existing brands responding to the gender-neutral shift with crossover merchandise, but there is also a wave of new entrants to the market.
Bosie, the post-95 casual fashion brand, produces ungendered clothing, and has completed three rounds of financing in more than a year. The clothing style is distinctive and unique, loved by younger consumers.
A quick search on TikTok shows that the hashtag for polysexuality has almost 10,000 views and is still growing as content creators produce more videos surrounding polysexual identity and polysexual people. On Instagram, the hashtag has over 1,000,000 tags. Thus, gender-free apparel is not only a rising trend, but also a new bonus for brands. The sex-free clothing is in line with the new trend of Asia's clothing industry in recent years.
Source: MUJI
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