Editorial

We are pleased to present the new issue of ZMJ dedicated to fashion and gender, edited by Nicola Brajato. The subject is particularly topical due to the theme that has been running through the fashion system for some time now, which has been called upon to review some of the cornerstones on which the history and theory of Western fashion has been based. As is well known, fashion historians identified around the end of the Middle Ages at the Italian city-states and a little later at the French courts a more incisive difference between male and female dress. Since then, gender differentiation has produced different interpretations, depending on phases, evolutions and involutions that anticipated or reflected changed relationships between men and women. In recent times, with the great influence of some breakthrough fashion collections — such as Alessandro Michele’s debut collection for Gucci in 2015, but also with Jean Paul Gaultier’s pioneering ‘man in a skirt’ in 1985, a rich and varied discussion on gender has begun that goes far beyond the male-female polarity, to the point of deconstructing a series of binarisms and conventions; gender fluidity, in fact, involves a reinterpretation of different expressions of inequality present in many contexts. In this issue, as readers will be able to appreciate, an original and focused point of view is proposed on some of the most interesting aspects of the debate on fashion and gender: we therefore wish you all a good read and a happy summer.