Gender Bending Fashion

Exhibition Website

Mar 21 2019 - Aug 25 2019


From the runways to the streets, designers and wearers today are upending traditional ideas about men’s and women’s clothing. But those trends in American and European fashion are not new. This exhibition looks across a century of haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion that has challenged rigid, binary definitions of dress. It features more than 60 boundary-pushing designs, presenting the work of groundbreaking contemporary designers—including Rad Hourani, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alessandro Michele for Gucci, Palomo, and Rei Kawakubo—in the context of historical trends like the garçonne look of the 1920s and the peacock revolution of the 1960s.

Gender Bending Fashion” examines a rich history of fashion disrupting, blurring, and redefining conventions and expectations around the relationship between gender and dress. At the same time, the garments on view can speak more broadly to societal shifts across the past century—including changing gender roles, increasing visibility of LGBTQIA communities, and the rise of social media as a powerful tool for self-expression. Throughout the exhibition, individual narratives emerge, touching on issues of gender identity and expression, sexuality, race, class, pop culture, activism, social justice, and more. Fashion has disrupted, blurred and redefined societal and cultural conventions and expectations around gender. 

Featuring pieces worn by actors, musicians, and influencers, including Marlene Dietrich, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, and Young Thug, the multimedia presentation also incorporates paintings, photographs, music, and video. The works in the exhibition are drawn from the MFA’s collection as well as loans from museums, archives, private collections, and fashion houses. 


Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website
Image: Alessandro Trincone, Annodami (detail), January 2016. Photographer: Gioconda & August. Model: Andrea Antonelli
  • Costume
  • Design
  • Rei Kawakubo
  • Alessandro Michele
  • Rad Hourani
  • Jean Paul Gaultier
  • and others

Exhibition Venues & Dates