Another London up-and-comer, Shaun Sampson, showed pale pink organza board shorts and ‘skirts’ made to look like beach towels. But what’s more interesting is the fact that Anderson is not alone. If Jonathan Anderson were an outlier, one mad designer whipping up androgynous looks out of a surfeit of aesthetic zeal, that would be interesting. But then you present that to the world, on a runway, and it becomes this ‘thing.’” You’re playing with a piece of fabric, trying to create a new line, a new proportion. When you’re in the studio,” he goes on, “that kind of experimentation feels normal. And then we cut the sleeves off, and then we made it short. “I mean, that top started as a long raglan mac. “In a way, it’s funny that people had such a strong reaction to that look,” Anderson tells me. But he insists that he’s not setting out to create controversy for him, the gender-bending emerges organically, out of formal risk-taking. “Atrocious,” sneered The Daily Mail.Īnderson is upfront about the fact that he likes testing the boundaries between men’s and women’s clothes. But the look that got eyebrows arching and tongues wagging was Anderson’s male halter top: backless, semi-sheer and floral patterned, the look was unavoidably effeminate. And this time, Anderson’s dominant silhouette was a lean tunic paired with fluid, elongated trousers, another shape he’d begun to articulate in his previous womenswear show.

Last season, for instance, Anderson showed pairs of ruffled shorts for men much like the ones in his Spring ’13 womenswear collection. The five-year-old label comprises collections for men and women, and designer Jonathan Anderson likes to overlap the look of the two.

The most forceful expression of this theme came from up-and-coming brand JW Anderson. Last week, as the Spring ’14 menswear shows kicked off in London, one trend sounded with all the subtlety of an air horn: androgyny is the new black.

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