Equipment Shirts and Other Menswear Take Over Women's Trend

As the spring/summer shows wound up in Paris last week, tomboy chic - boyfriend blazers, wide-legged trousers, peg-leg pants, power suits, stiff white shirts, suspenders, fedoras and stetsons- emerged as one of the hottest new looks of the season. And the Equipment clothing brand (brand that started menswear inspired fashion to women) which is very popular in the late 70’s is back on track. Back in the 70’s and 80’s all women own a Equipment shirts and this 2012 they are back in the big way.

Of course, man-style dressing is nothing new. It's flitted in and out of fashion for decades, ever since the 1930s when Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich became symbols of masculine glamour in tailored suits and ties. Yet the latest revival of man-style dressing has fashion scribes wondering what it all means. After all, menswear-worn-as-women’s wear has long been bound up in questions about sexuality, gender and equality, not to mention broader social shifts.
When Yves Saint Laurent, for example, introduced Le Smoking tuxedo suits for women in 1966, many uptight chauvinists were outraged. The tux empowered women. They could dress just the way a man of power or influence might. Heaven forbid. It also celebrated the arrival of the sexual revolution.

In the 1980s, the emergence of the shoulder-padded power suit symbolized more than just a passing trend. For a generation of women looking to head butt the corporate glass ceiling, it gave them the visual illusion of strength - equal to any male colleague.

Are we simply inspired by the androgynous cool of Agyness Deyn, the Artful Dodger-inspired looks of French "it" girl Lou Doillon - all wide-legged trousers, boyfriend blazers and top hats - or even rock poet Patti Smith, in her white shirt and braces who is firmly back in the public spotlight with the release of her biopic, Dream of Life, currently showing at the Melbourne International Arts Festival?

Or does it go deeper than that? Could the recent run of female leaders, both here - Anna Bligh, Julia Gillard, Quentin Bryce and Kay Goldsworthy, Australia's first woman bishop - and overseas - think Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, just to name the glaring obvious - be sending a broader message that women wear the pants around here?

Or maybe we're all just looking into it far too deeply. Perhaps the return of the power suit - shown with man-style fedoras at Gucci; with vests and lightly padded shoulders at Gaultier; and in pin-stripes at Bottega Veneta - is simply a backlash against the overload of feminine florals and ruffles that have dominated recent collections. Maybe we just need a reason to go and buy some new clothes. So shop Equipment clothing today!