I am a 15-year-old interested in fashion. The other day my father sent me one of your articles entitled “Gender fluidity in fashion is older than you think” (How to Spend It, FT Weekend, March 12).
The article presented the flamboyance and colour that men’s fashion has historically displayed as evidence of a centuries-long tradition of gender fluidity.
I am certain, human nature being what it is, that this tradition is real, but the article’s examples didn’t demonstrate it at all. Pink was historically considered a masculine colour, as it was seen as bright and powerful. Only after Mamie Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower’s wife and American first lady from 1953 to 1961, took to wearing pink in the 1950s did it become a “girl colour”.
Large breeches and ornate jewellery were similarly seen as the height of masculinity. The heels worn by Charles Coote in the illustration you use were probably adapted from heels first created for Persian cavalry to ride their horses better. If you wanted to talk about gender fluidity in history and fashion, perhaps Dionysus would be a better example. He was after all raised as a girl, and he commonly wore silk at a time when mostly only women did.
Rosa Bilston
New Haven, CT, US
