If last week’s New York Fashion Week is any indication, then trans and gender-nonconforming people are continuing to influence the fashion industry in profound ways, whether as models in multiple runway shows, or inspirations for clothing that blurs or reverses the boundaries between genders. At a time when more trans people are walking runways and more designers are playing with established notions of gender, it’s useful to evaluate how the clothes that set the tone for how people dress — in America and around the world — are moving towards including those whose genders are extraordinary.

There’s a sense that our culture has become increasingly comfortable with transgender models, especially if they conform to cisgender beauty norms. But those who do not continue to be marginal, even though there are certainly many shows that play with cross-gender aesthetics, from The Blonds’ play on the Disney villain trope to Vaquera’s campus-inspired gender-nonconforming designs. And while transgender models abound, there was a dearth of openly transgender designers who showed as part of the official fashion week calendar. So while it’s laudable for trans people to continue to be cast in shows as models, the forces that drive the industry — those with the power to truly shape what we wear — continue to be predominantly cisgender.

Patrick Starr Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Disney

That said, there are certainly labels that promote a decidedly queer, body-positive, and diverse aesthetic. Most notably, swimwear brand Chromat has taken a decisive role in bringing people of various sizes, genders, races, sexualities, and abilities to the runway. Chromat’s SS19 show not only featured several trans models, including Leyna Bloom, Geena Rocero, and Carmen Carrera, it also trumpeted the message that there is no single ideal body shape or size, which rang clear when several models in the show with different body types wore T-shirts that read “Sample Size” across the front.

A number of shows also featured male-assigned models in clothes that are coded as feminine, including Patrick Starr walking The Blonds’ show (of the design duo, Phillipe Blond is gender-nonconforming) in an outfit clearly inspired by Ursula in The Little Mermaid, and Nico Tortorella in black tulle and a high-waisted undergarment for Christian Siriano, signaling that at least some in the fashion industry are happy to embrace gender-nonconformity. Starr’s appearance was especially notable given that he also doesn’t conform to fashion’s notoriously punishing size standards, at a time when the industry has seen little progress in terms of casting plus-size models. There was also the Opening Ceremony drag show curated by RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Velour, which not only featured Christina Aguilera alongside a plethora of drag performers, but also nonbinary poet and performer ALOK.

Fernanda Calfat/Getty Images

“Gender-nonconforming people have always been the vanguard of style, beauty, and fashion — but we are the mood board; rarely the models.” ALOK wrote in a recent piece for them. “We are called ugly as designers utilize our looks from our Instagram feeds.” ALOK’s comments underlie some of the tensions trans people feel around industry events like New York Fashion Week, as its efforts to diversify are still performed with a keen eye towards marketable, mainstream tastes, even as it also is on a continual quest for novelty and innovation. Queer creators like ALOK themself often provide said innovation without being recognized by labels and brands as people who can wear clothes and be deemed attractive or desirable.

It’s also notable that gender-nonconforming style is often associated with theatricality, maybe because in a fashion field dominated by womenswear, male-assigned people donning “women’s clothes” is often linked to spectacle. So it’s striking that at least one young designer questions gender without an abundance of camp, Melody Lin from Yajun Studios. One of the major criticisms of mainstream brands like Abercrombie and Zara creating “gender-neutral fashion” is that this has tended to mean shapeless clothing in drab colors. And while queer designers’ response to this has tended to err towards the theatrical — all bright colors, metallics, and glitter — Yajun shows how it’s possible to be genderless and understated without being boring. This season’s collection featured Lin’s characteristic use of unusual materials and impeccable attention to detail, bending the line between outerwear and eveningwear while also questioning our gendered assumptions of whether a garment is for a man or for a woman.

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Yajun

Yet a recap of trans presence at New York Fashion Week would not be complete without the much-touted all-transgender Marco Marco underwear show, which featured the likes of Laith Ashley, Aydian Dowling, Gigi Gorgeous, and Pose’s Dominique Jackson among a cast of 34 trans models. A number of outlets (including them.) lauded the show as historic, though there was significant pushback online, because the trans designer Gogo Graham has staged all-transgender shows during New York Fashion Week in the past. Yet I find the “Who did it first?” question less substantial than the issues of representation and access the affair has raised, the tension between Marco Marco’s hardbody model aesthetic and Graham’s specific ethos of designing for trans people’s bodies.