Tailored for All? Uneasy Truths About Marketing Gender-Fluid Fashion

As a marketing scholar who's passionate about fashion, Maren Hoff noticed so many professional women wearing suit vests to work that she purchased a few herself.

It may seem that gender norms are loosening, as women adopt male-sounding names and men wear nail polish. Indeed, fashion and workplaces seem to reflect a shift: During the past decade, retailers and brands such as Nordstrom, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci have launched gender-fluid collections, and some companies have relaxed dress codes to allow more gender-fluid expression at work.

But the way these trends play out often reinforce, rather than upend, traditional power hierarchies, says Hoff, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

That’s because uptake heads primarily in one direction: Women are more likely to adopt masculine styles than vice versa, likely because masculinity signals power and feels less risky than feminine markers. It may be easier as a woman to wear a vest than for a male colleague to come to work wearing dangly earrings, for instance.

Hoff’s research, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, finds:

• During the past century, about 50% more traditionally male names in the US became gender-fluid in an average year than female names.

• Traditionally masculine style has influenced women’s apparel more than the inverse, according to an analysis of clothing sold by a large online retailer.

“Despite this trend being there on the marketplace to serve inclusivity, it actually does perpetuate those power dynamics,” says Hoff, who wrote “The Asymmetry of Gender-Fluid Trends” with Silvia Bellezza, associate professor at Columbia Business School. “There's this power hierarchy that has traditionally existed, and in one way or another, still appears to exist.”

Consumers blur traditional gender lines

“Symbolic consumption”—choosing products and brands to express one’s identity or signal status—has long interested Hoff. “You can study these trends in names and learn something about how society thinks about certain tastes at any given point in time, and then that becomes relevant to marketing and fashion,” she says.

Gender fluidity is a relatively recent phenomenon, says Hoff, but one gaining traction: A 2023 report found that 36% of US consumers have purchased clothing outside traditional gender categories. Hoff points to her survey of over 1,200 consumers in which respondents said a truly gender-fluid collection should look balanced—representing about a 50-50 split between traditionally male and traditionally female styles.

The researchers began by analyzing how designers, brands, and popular culture define gender fluidity. By mining Google search results, they found that gender fluidity takes shape gradually over time and differs from gender bending (adopting names or products designed for the opposite sex), unisex (designed for both genders), and androgyny (combining elements of both genders in one name or product).

“Many people associate gender-fluid fashion with a particular community [such as LGBTQIA+], but that’s not the case,” the paper explains. “Gender-fluid fashion is for everyone.”

When names cross from boys to girls

The researchers hypothesized that masculinity continues to “socially dominate” femininity both culturally and in commerce, despite efforts to reduce gender inequity. They conducted six studies: two large dataset analyses and several follow-up experiments.

The authors analyzed the US Social Security records of the top 100,000 baby names between 1880 and 2022. They looked for names clearly associated with either men or women when they first appeared and charted whether and how the names transitioned to being used by the opposite sex over time.

In 1883, five boys and no girls were named Blake. In the 1960s, the name started to become popular among girls, and in 1981, the team determined it had achieved crossover status. The researchers found:

• More male names crossed gender lines. On average, 310 male names per year became gender fluid.

• Fewer female names crossed over. By comparison, only 207 female names per year made the shift.

Menswear influences women’s fashion

Then, the researchers took their thesis to fashion, looking at how often an image-recognition model miscategorized menswear as womenswear and vice versa. Since the model is trained to recognize traditional gender norms, gender-fluid designs might confuse it, the researchers suspected.

They scraped over 200,000 product images from global online retailer Farfetch and found that:

• 7.1% of womenswear was mistaken as menswear

• 5.3% of menswear was mistaken as womenswear

Additional studies probed underlying motives. Ultimately, they found that women and non-binary people were less scared of negative reactions and more aware of male advantage than men. For that reason, they’re more likely to choose a gender-fluid product.

In settings that challenge traditional hierarchies—like workplaces that prize feminine traits—men feel more comfortable adopting gender-fluid options.

How to build awareness among business leaders

Why do women appear more open to gender fluidity? Hoff says it’s less risky—and potentially conveys an advantage—for women to send in a resume with a fluid name and to wear fluid outfits than it is for men.

“It speaks to this idea that women are trying to assimilate more with the traditionally powerful gender, and those traits are being rewarded,” she says.

Based on the team’s findings, Hoff says that business leaders and marketers could:

Reexamine the traits their workplace rewards

If companies want employees to feel comfortable expressing themselves—including through gender-fluid clothing—the research suggests their leaders must look at how they define success. In one of Hoff’s studies, participants were more likely to dress fluidly at workplaces where firms emphasized more traditionally “feminine” traits like collaboration and empathy over assertiveness and competition. “That would be a workplace context where men would also be more open to dressing more fluidly,” Hoff says.

Reduce perceived risk around inclusive products

For fashion brands, consumer adoption depends in part on whether gender-fluid styles feel socially acceptable. Hoff says brands could consider advertising that encourages consumers to “be bold and take risks,” and suggests featuring more men in gender-fluid clothing to help destigmatize those choices.

Recognize that it takes more awareness to dismantle hierarchy

The research shows that merely selling inclusive products can still reinforce traditional power dynamics if uptake flows primarily toward masculine-coded signals.

Understand the gender associations of all products

Products from drinks to sports cars carry strong gender connotations that companies can challenge or reinforce, deliberately or unintentionally. If women are always bridging that divide, entrenched power systems are unlikely to change.

“Gender associations are so important,” Hoff says. “The implications are broader than the context that we study.”

Illustration by Ariana Cohen-Halberstam with photo from Adobe Stock/ Iuliia Pilipeichenko