By The New York Times |Vanessa Friedman and Guy Trebay

One of the greatest tendencies of the spring season 2022 that just concluded was no particular silhouette or color, but that many designers put both women and men in their catwalks in what would have been called “clothing beforeof a woman ”, not as much as provocation but simply as something predetermined.Here, our two critics discuss why, and what this can mean in terms of gender, sexuality and society identity.

Vanessa Friedman: Guy, I was thinking about you during the last two weeks of parades in Milan and Paris because, although they were nominally "Women's clothes", that term and its corollary - the "men's clothes" - seem less and less significant.

It was not gender fluidity or gender neutrality or double gender, all hybrids that have been proposed to refer to parades that combine male and female collections, for example, or that present garments that are rather generic and are not reallyidentifiable by the traditional categories of gender clothing.This was something new.What...a gender agnosticism.So we saw classically "female" garments of bright colors, soft fabrics and a lot of decoration, only they were wearing men.

In Raf Simons: Skirt suit for her;skirt suit for him.In Valentino: Tafetán chocolate smell washing, violet and bright green for her;The same for him.The same in Lanvin.In Marni, we saw giant sweaters with great flowers both in men and women.At the end of the season, he had become so common that he barely caught my attention.I only saw clothes.

It seems to me that it is an interesting and possibly significant systemic change, which responds to cultural and social changes, especially among younger generations.But I also wonder how much it has an impact beyond fashion and pop culture.(Hi, Harry Styles, Billy Porter and Lil Nas X).What do you think?

Guy Trebay: Let's put aside gender for a moment and talk about sex.More than the recent gender agnosticism - which is nothing more than the last evolution of a process initiated a century ago with Chanel and women with pants - which has surprised me lately in fashion is a suspicion to the anatomical differences that still still, mostly, they differentiate women from women.

With the exception of someone like Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who interspersed in his parade apparently feminine with men who carried what looked like a lingerie of Cosabella, many designers presented such bulky garments that it would never be guess that their carriers had secondary sexual characteristics.

V.F.: But that is my question: is this the natural end of the progression initiated in the 1920s by Gabrielle Chanel?After all, if we now accept without blinking women with pants, which I think everyone does (except certain religious groups), shouldn't men with dresses and skirts have the same acceptance?

This is how the New York Human Rights Commission performed a few years ago the law related to clothing codes in the offices: businessmen could demand that their employees put certain garments, but only if both sexes could carry them (For example, if women should wear heels, men too).

And if men still scare us with dresses and skirts, as it could be said that it happens to most people outside this small fashion sector, are it due to the fact that we still cling to old power structures?Is it considered that men's access to classic female garments subtract power?Somehow...We weaken, because women are supposedly "weak sex".Maybe fashion is being advanced in this.

G.T.: There are many beautiful things around.However, regardless of the quality of the designs we are seeing, the environment may seem austere to the point of being Puritan.It is the same on both sides of the ocean, whether in a collection of Aaron Potts Apotts, in which we saw the models wrapped in raffia aprons that hid the body, inspired by the towns of the Hamar tribe of the Valley of the OMO river,Or, on a larger scale, in Valentino, where the bodies are still tight and wrapped by volumes of fabric as architectural as organic.What happens here?

V.F.: I do not agree with you on the lack of sex.Yes, some designers - Fraf Simons and Aaron Potts, as you say - put everyone "shmattes" of giant work, but many others made the skin an important accessory.And even Raf said the volumes seemed seductive when we talked after the parade.

But it is also true that those who did focus on the bodies, such as Donatella Versace, did it in a traditionally sexist way.That is, his parade began with a dozen without a shirt who paraded down the catwalk in different positions, and then pulled silk strings so that the roof was undulating.It was like a kind of very "Camp" Sultan den.And then there were those painful bodis and the nudist heels carried by Saint Laurent's women.

4."There was suficient ... https: // t.CO/HOPFHBO4ID

— Erin Bates Fri May 31 12:53:44 +0000 2019

On the other hand, in Marni, both men and women wore the same striped elastic knitted dresses, which surrounded the body as a spiral and cut off the sides.They did not leave much to the imagination.How about?

G.T.: Do you remember “Unzipped”, the 1995 Douglas Keeve documentary about Isaac Mizrahi?Has Isaac made a collection inspired by "Nanook of the North", just to find out, just before the presentation, that another designer had done the same?

Sometimes it gives the feeling that there is a kind of collective mind of designers.It is not something aware.A couple of seasons.Now everyone does, from Versace to Willy Chavarria.I have the feeling that fashion is updating with culture in general.

If you spend some time on social networks, you will know how easily men now adopt elements of traditionally female clothing and cleaning.It is not difficult to imagine that the use of dresses for men or whatever in the office is normalized.The kilts are the test.However, although some European designers have transformed desire into a kind of cartoon, we still do not see much that it seems particularly positive from the point of view of sex or even the affirmation of the body.

Maybe it is a consequence of our forced isolation or living inside the screens.The last thing I think when I see the fashion of the catwalks is in seduction.I often remember that comment from Vivienne Westwood about the real end of all this of dressing is that two people undress.It is as if we forgot about sexual appeal.

V.F.: Yes, to undress.But also to shield yourself, to tell the world who you are, to indicate belonging to a group.And that is why this gender agnosticism is important.To do this, do you really think the boys are going to get dressed in Congress or on Wall Street or even on Facebook very soon?I would like to think so, but I'm not so sure.We cling to our prejudices about fashion with great force, especially when it comes to the genre.Maybe that's why the vibration of seduction feels less.

In general, I have the feeling that a collection can communicate a political or physical approach, but rarely both.And at this time, the message about gender - especially bodies in clothes and who can put what (and the idea that everyone should be able to use everything) - seems to have priority.

G.T.: I don't think I see Palomo Spain on Wall Street soon.However, if something has taught me the report on this issue is that fashion is the first language of an evolving culture.And although designers can fully articulate the message they transmit (generally not), they are providing us with socio -political updates when the official gender signals skip.The theoretical of the genus Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was right when pointing out that these categories and false oppositions are useful for states, but for individuals...Not that much.

The best - the most critical, even - of what happens in the catwalks is that we can see how arbitrary gender divisions are broken in real time.I had not enjoyed a parade and the most recent of Miu Miu so long since Miu Miu.Miuccia Prada, queen of ambiguities, gave us her vision of the physical as something political showing girls dressed as boys dressed as girls dressed as males.

V.F.: I also liked Miu Miu a lot, especially the reflection on the school uniform and the work uniform, which, as you point out and Prada made it absolutely clear, it is classically masculine.Thom Browne has been playing with this idea for years and always puts men in their female variations of the gray suit man.What takes me back to the original point: women originally dressed with male camouflage in part to infiltrate first in the workplace, then in the executive office and then in the meeting room (also the boys club).

Now that much of the world is getting to the idea that girls can govern the world - now that we finally have a vice president (even if I always wear a tailor suit) - does that mean that men will dress with female camouflage?That's what fashion underlines: the balance of power is changing.These distinctions are nothing more than old historical constructions.That is the symbolism of all that.

And honestly, I bet that can scare men so much...that their pants will fall.A model presents an outfit at the Raf Simons Parade of Spring 2022 in Paris on September 30, 2021.(Valerio Mezzanotti/The New York Times)