The unisex movement may have made women’s clothes more masculine, but it never made them unfeminine; furthermore, “attempts to feminize men’s appearance turned out to be particularly short-lived,” Paoletti notes. (Even today, it’s mainly women who are buying unisex garments, not men.) While some men attempted to reclaim the flamboyance that had disappeared with the French Revolution, for many this so-called Peacock Revolution “raised the specter of decadence and homosexuality, a fear reinforced by the emergence of the gay liberation movement.” The irony, Paoletti points out, was that “at that time true homosexual men tended to be purposely invisible … To do otherwise was to risk one’s career or even being arrested.” The new popular and scientific interest in bisexuality was truly liberating for homosexual men, offering them a culturally acceptable alternative to the closet. It was liberating for fashion, as well; if everyone was a little bit of each sex, clothing did not have to proclaim one or the other as loudly.

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Thus, the novelty of matchy-matchy “his-n-hers” outfits and everyone-in-jumpsuits-futurism quickly burned out in favor of the sexier androgyny (which Paoletti defines as clothes combining masculine and feminine elements, rather than avoiding gender markers altogether). In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent introduced le smoking, a tuxedo for women; over the next few years, he would reinterpret the mannish silhouette in gangster pinstripes and safari khaki. Halston made his name with the ubiquitous Ultrasuede shirtdress—a modern, feminine twist on a man’s shirt. As the current FIT Museum exhibition Yves Saint Laurent and Halston: Fashioning the Seventies illustrates, the designers weren't merely dressing women in menswear; they were dressing them as themselves, in classic pieces that reflected their own, subtly androgynous wardrobes. The exhibition catalogue argues that this “slick and functional style” associated with the international jet set was equally appealing to young, working women: not just trousers but pea coats, dress shirts, and blazers became female wardrobe staples.

Men, too, experimented with androgyny. Unusually, womenswear designers (including Pierre Cardin and Bill Blass) began to produce menswear lines; the mandarin-collared, button-front Nehru jacket (the Western name for the traditional Indian garment, after the first Prime Minister of India) was a Cardin signature. Along with tunics, vests, sport coats, and furs, the Nehru jacket offered men an alternative to the proverbial gray flannel suit; Nehru collars, ascots, turtlenecks, and scarves made neckties obsolete, at least temporarily. Today, women are still wearing pants to the office, but men have reverted to suits and ties.

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Paoletti traces the end of the unisex era to the mid-1970s. In 1974, Diane von Furstenberg introduced her wrap dress, a garment that combined femininity and functionality. With its demure length, slit skirt, and deep V-neck, it was simultaneously modest and sexy; it could go from the office to the disco. The wrap dress wooed women away from pantsuits, landing von Furstenberg on the cover of Newsweek in 1976 under the headline “Rags & Riches.”