UNSEX: Exhibition-Making as a Methodological Approach to Interpret Contemporary Gender-Neutral Fashion in Museums and Gallery Spaces

According to theorist Elizabeth Wilson, fashion “defines and redefines the gender boundary” (Wilson, 2007, p.117). Correspondingly, academics Joanne Entwistle (2015) and Judith Roof (2016) further consider how contemporary fashion reshapes that boundary, whilst engaging with nonbinary gender identities. Moreover, the links between fashion and genders are negotiated by leading fashion media, such as Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily, and by practitioners in fashion and museums, including designers Rad Hourani and Neil Grotzinger, and curators Maria Luisa Frisa (2018, 2020) and Michelle Finamore (2019), among others.

The demographic data around nonbinary genders are inconclusive; notably, in the UK, gender identity was first addressed during the 2021 Census. However, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network estimate that up to 25% of the global population may not identify with the gender binary (Bauer et al., 2017). Whereas gender-neutrality is apparent in contemporary western fashion, few fashion exhibitions have engaged critically with the topic.

With this practice-based research, comprising a written thesis and a practical exhibition proposal, I aim to contribute to the field of fashion exhibition-making by developing strategies to interpret contemporary gender-neutral fashion within museums and galleries. In my thesis I provide an analytical definition of gender-neutral fashion and identify designers and objects, which synthesize a fragmentary history of gendered archetypes and their gender-neutral reinterpretations within fashion. In my practical proposal I consider existing exhibition-making conventions, such as plinths and mannequins, and I identify the following new strategies towards negotiating the relationships between historic gendering and contemporary genderneutrality: topography, mapping, orientation, augmentation, disruption, and materiality.

Finally, a central objective within this practice-based thesis is to demonstrate the symbiosis of exhibition-making theory and practice. Thus, the graphic integration of fashion imagery, architectural representation and text comprises as significant a contribution to the research as the body of text and provides a new template for practice-based research on fashion exhibition-making.

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