You have to applaud Karl Lagerfeld's sheer audacity. It's one thing to dress women in 21st-century cycling shorts and geometric prints (as he did in his spring/summer 2006 collection), but to dress women in manly clothes, as he did at his latest Paris collection? Now that's in a whole other league of fashion boundarypushing altogether.
The snow-haired Chanel designer sent models for his autumn/winter 2006-2007 show down the catwalk in his trademark cravats and frilly shirts. Jackets were tight and tailored, skirts short and trousers billowy. But the colour palette was limited to black and white and, though there was lace in abundance, the models looked as though they were wearing Lagerfeld's own iconic wardrobe, only with a couple of dresses thrown in for good measure.
And Chanel isn't the only label trying to make ladies look more like well-groomed gentlemen. This season, British designer Alexander McQueen - a regular offender when it comes to dressing ladies in a masculine manner - has created a soft tuxedo shape complete with plunging neckline and cropped riding jacket, while Marc Jacobs, a one-man barometer of all things cool, showed a black tux with satin lapels and high-waisted trousers.
Of course, ladies dressing like men isn't exactly unheard of. The grandaddy of designers, Yves Saint Laurent, unveiled the first women's tuxedo suit, Le Smoking (pictured), in 1966, prompting an androgynous revolution which gripped the imagination of fashion intellectuals for decades. Think Angelica Huston looking fabulous during her Jack Nicholson days.
In the 1980s the masculine look was hijacked by iron-willed career women who thought dressing like men with shoulder pads might help net them manly six-figure salaries. Calvin Klein also had a bash at androgyny in the 1990s, but the look was more about flat chested teenagers with boyish haircuts and minimal make-up.
The current look, though, has nothing to with androgyny proper. Lagerfeld et al aren't trying to cajole women into looking like men, they just want them to dress like them. That means long and flowing hair is most definitely in, as are sultry make-up, just the right amount of cleavage and heels as high as the Empire State Building.
Overall, the look is covertly sexual. Jacobs styled figure-hugging tuxedos with nothing underneath but a fabric belt and a discreet silver necklace, while McQueen opted for barely-there blouses with plunging necklines and just a little frill around the edges.
Fashion is still celebrating everything feminine at the moment and, however odd it seems, the new gender-bending trend is very much part of this look. Designers may be borrowing items from the stereotypical male wardrobe, but they are styling them with a large dollop of girlie prettiness. The message? While out shopping this spring look out for black trousers, black skirts, black dresses and that all-important black tuxedo jacket. White might well be the "in" colour of the season, but all real ladies know that you can only really cut a dash in black. Paired with a frilly feminine top, of course.
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