When Fashion Gets Gender Wrong

Techwear is supposed to be a boundary-breaking, avant-garde fashion subculture. So why is the community mostly men?

Photo: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

Techwear is centered around one simple principle: utility through innovation. The fashion subculture’s aesthetic leans toward the futuristic (think: urban ninja meets astronaut chic), but nothing is inherently gendered; everyone wants a raincoat when it rains. Yet, for the most part, the big-name techwear designers are all men, and the popular brands produce only men’s sizes.

Recently, a Reddit user asked whether the popular techwear subreddit r/techwearclothing was only for dialogue around men’s clothes. The majority of commenters replied with a welcoming attitude: Techwear is androgynous, unisex, or gender neutral, they said; anyone can wear anything, and women are welcome to participate.

The community’s response is encouraging, yet the Redditor’s question hits at the heart of a problem pulsing through this otherwise vibrant subculture: If techwear is, in fact, androgynous, then where are the clothing designs for anyone who is not male?

It’s easy to design something for men, call it unisex, and say it’s for everyone. This bias is extremely common even outside of fashion, with everything from adventure gear to artificial hearts to medical care. This is where techwear’s relationship with androgyny becomes a problem. Without addressing how gender bias affects techwear, women, transfolk, and gender nonconforming people will continue to be outliers in the subculture.