I’m not suggesting the general idea of dressing gender-neutral isn’t a good one; I am largely un-knowledgeable on the subject and can’t really comment on that aspect of it. But a woman wearing a suit in a cut traditionally for men carries connotations a naive wearer may not be aware of.
It’s a bit like wearing a collar. It has a specific meaning in BDSM subculture, and signals membership to that group. Someone naively wearing a collar is going to get a lot of unwanted attention at a social gathering. Wearing a suit isn’t quite that specific, and doesn’t belong to a specific subculture, but if your goal is to not have people come up to you and start talking about sex, it’s going to fail in a whole bunch of ways.
Ah right, I see what you’re saying there. I have loose women’s jeans and I have men’s jeans and agree that the implications are rather different.
In this instance I was intending to convey the “modest, but nevertheless womens” trouser suit, as exemplied in theselinks, rather than “a suit that looks like a mens suit”.
What prompted me to respond was the “tuxedo for black tie” comment. For business-formal, there’s obviously a variety of tasteful and subdued options. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as gender-neutral evening wear.
Oh! Ok, fair enough, that makes even more sense. Though I think that’s much less of an issue now than it would have been 5 years ago, because ladies tuxedos have been incrediblytrendy for about 2 years now. I normally dress very feminine and I still have a couple in my wardrobe. Obviously most of the examples given are still styled in the “sexy” direction, but it’s easy to modify that into positive “stylish” but negative “sexy” (by, say, ditching the high heels and switching the short skirts and tight trousers for flowing skirts and palazzo trousers).
It would be like if collars suddenly became fashionable, and celebrities started to wear them to red carpet events all the time.
I’m not suggesting the general idea of dressing gender-neutral isn’t a good one; I am largely un-knowledgeable on the subject and can’t really comment on that aspect of it. But a woman wearing a suit in a cut traditionally for men carries connotations a naive wearer may not be aware of.
It’s a bit like wearing a collar. It has a specific meaning in BDSM subculture, and signals membership to that group. Someone naively wearing a collar is going to get a lot of unwanted attention at a social gathering. Wearing a suit isn’t quite that specific, and doesn’t belong to a specific subculture, but if your goal is to not have people come up to you and start talking about sex, it’s going to fail in a whole bunch of ways.
Ah right, I see what you’re saying there. I have loose women’s jeans and I have men’s jeans and agree that the implications are rather different.
In this instance I was intending to convey the “modest, but nevertheless womens” trouser suit, as exemplied in these links, rather than “a suit that looks like a mens suit”.
What prompted me to respond was the “tuxedo for black tie” comment. For business-formal, there’s obviously a variety of tasteful and subdued options. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as gender-neutral evening wear.
Oh! Ok, fair enough, that makes even more sense. Though I think that’s much less of an issue now than it would have been 5 years ago, because ladies tuxedos have been incredibly trendy for about 2 years now. I normally dress very feminine and I still have a couple in my wardrobe. Obviously most of the examples given are still styled in the “sexy” direction, but it’s easy to modify that into positive “stylish” but negative “sexy” (by, say, ditching the high heels and switching the short skirts and tight trousers for flowing skirts and palazzo trousers).
It would be like if collars suddenly became fashionable, and celebrities started to wear them to red carpet events all the time.