Women Who Prefer Men’s Wear.
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Two fashion bloggers stood side by side at the Stampd presentation during the second day of New York Fashion Week: Men’s. Each wore a crisply tailored suit with white sneakers that appeared to have been spared an encounter with the street.
Meet Danielle Cooper, 31, a former professional basketball player from California who runs the blog She’s a Gent, and Sara Geffrard, 24, a former dancer from Haiti and the woman behind A Dapper Chick.
“When I wear a suit, I feel like I can do things I would not otherwise do,” Ms. Geffrard
said. “I’m a very, very shy person, but if I’m in a suit, I feel very
confident. I feel like I can talk to whoever. Otherwise I would walk in
and feel sort of small.”
Ms. Cooper
said: “We’re in an era when men and women wear everything. It doesn’t
matter if you’re gay or straight. For us, it’s really about showing
young women that they can wear whatever they want.”
Their approach to fashion makes perfect sense in a time when the actor-musician Jaden Smith wears skirts, the rapper Young Thug declares that there’s no such thing as gender, and Teen Vogue’s advice column offers tips for figuring out your gender identity. Bill Cunningham of The New York Times captured the women with his lens in February and called their style of dress “absolutely superb.”
At
the Stampd presentation last week, Ms. Cooper and Ms. Geffrard wound
their way through the crowd, sharing observations about the clothes.
Pointing out a pair of olive-green shorts, Ms. Geffrard said they
reminded her of the loose cut popular in the ’90s. “But he moved the
pockets to the front to make the look more modern,” she said of Chris
Stamp’s design.
Ms.
Cooper added that they reminded her of the clothing worn by members of
the military (her father having been one of them). “He’s taking that
old-school aspect and making it for the new generation, elevating the
cargo pocket,” she said.
The
women continued bouncing ideas off each other as they considered which
pieces were their favorites. Ms. Cooper punctuated certain moments of
shared clarity with a smile and an exclamation, “Get out of my head!”
Ms.
Cooper and Ms. Geffrard met more than a year ago at a store opening.
“We were both shy,” Ms. Geffrard said. “I saw her and she saw me, and
eventually we said something to each other.” The two bonded over an
experience they had being cyberbullied by another blogger, whom they
refused to name, and their love of men’s wear.
Ms. Cooper and Ms. Geffrard, who attended more than a dozen shows at New York Fashion Week:
Men’s, often speak about empowering their gender and representing
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people. Both have teamed up
with Nike for its #BeTrue campaign, which raised money for a nonprofit that works to end discrimination in sports. Ms. Geffrard founded the Dapper Chicks of New York, which strives to raise awareness of issues like bullying and women’s equality, and Ms. Cooper has worked with the Human Rights Campaign.
During
the men’s shows, a few protesters demonstrated outside Skylight
Clarkson Sq in Lower Manhattan, wearing T-shirts with “Don’t Shoot” and
“Walter Scott” written on them. “There are so many major brands and
corporations here right now,” Ms. Geffrard said. “This was a needed
move. Maybe some people weren’t paying attention and weren’t being
sensitive about what’s going on in the community. They’re here reminding
us that black lives matter.”
Ms.
Cooper and Ms. Geffrard are athletic and, when they were younger, chose
casual men’s-style streetwear that would move easily between the court,
the dance studio and home. Why the change to more formal pieces? “I
used to wear more of that urban streetwear, and I would get certain
looks that I didn’t really like,” Ms. Geffrard said. “I would go into a
store and someone would follow me. When I started dressing the way I do
now, I didn’t get that anymore.”
For
Ms. Cooper, the style she saw in Germany, where she played pro
basketball, influenced the way she thought of fashion. So did Scott
Disick of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” fame. “I think Scott Disick
is the sharpest dresser,” Ms. Cooper said. “When I was transitioning out
of typical urbanwear to something more elegant, no other man was
wearing a lime green pinstripe suit. I said, ‘One day I want to dress
like him.’”
Though
historical and fictional examples of women in men’s clothing abound,
they are often characterized by the desire to conceal one’s gender for
other purposes (think Mulan, Joan of Arc or Amanda Bynes in “She’s the
Man”). Ms. Geffrard and Ms. Cooper have no interest in that kind of
thing, a desire understood by their tailor, Shao Yang of the Tailory New York.
“These
suits are actually women’s wear,” Ms. Geffrard said, adding that Ms.
Yang takes care to add feminine touches to the suits by, for example,
taking them in slightly more than usual at the waist.
“I don’t want to be a guy,” Ms. Cooper said. “I want to be a woman in men’s wear, like Olivia on ‘Scandal’ or Ellen DeGeneres.”
Fashion journalists can see very well what they’re up to.
“The
first thing you think when you look at Danielle and Sara is, ‘This is
chic,’ not, ‘Are they a man or a woman? Black or white?’” said Wendell Brown, the creative director at large for The Daily Beast.
David Yi,
a fashion reporter at Mashable, said, “There is a movement toward
clothes not being segregated by gender but rather by color or size or
shape.”
At
the Carlos Campos runway show, which included female models among the
men, Ms. Cooper smiled from her place among the standees. “He didn’t
change the construction that much to make it for women,” she whispered. A
certain piece worn by a male model caught her eye. “That pullover,” she
said, noting an olive-green windbreaker. “I just want to walk out with
it.”
Ms.
Geffrard and Ms. Cooper said their male fashion compatriots had been
welcoming, for the most part. “When we first started, there was this
feeling of, ‘Who are these two women?’” Ms. Cooper said. They estimate
that about half of their followers on Instagram
are men, who often ask for advice. “Women have always been associated
with fashion and taste and the fact that we’re women in that space, I
think men feel they can trust us,” Ms. Geffrard said.
Yet
being a woman in a man’s space can come with difficulties. Before the
lights dimmed at the Carlos Campos show, a male guest commented loudly
on Ms. Cooper’s look, offering unsolicited thoughts on the quality of
the tailoring. He reached over, pushing another female guest aside, and
took the liberty of fiddling with her jacket to get a closer look at the
fit of her pants.
Without even a slight shift in her expression, Ms. Cooper said, “It’s all part of the job.”
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