Women wearing men’s clothes is nothing new: Coco Chanel wore the suits of her lover, Katharine Hepburn wore men’s khakis and Diane Keaton went Charlie Chaplin better then Chaplin himself in Annie Hall.
The latest person to join this auspicious lineup? You, reader, in Nick Grimshaw’s new range for Topman.
Grimmy was apparently a hard taskmaster for the Topman team. “Unless I wanted to wear it right away we didn’t do it”, so reads the intro to the range on the Topman website. He might have changed that to say “unless my mates Pixie Geldof and Kate Moss and I wanted to wear it”, because you can see these clothes at home in their wardrobes, too.
He has been spotted wearing the leopard-print coat – set to be the alpha buy of the collection – around town, and Kate would definitely be partial to borrowing it, along with the rock’n’roll fringed jacket. Pixie, meanwhile, loves a punk-ish jumper, so would likely pilfer the laddered black one, or the striped fluffy number here.
As unisex fashion actually becomes a viable thing, and borrowed-from-the-boyfriend silhouettes look set to stay as part of womenswear, women wearing menswear is now less in the realm of super-style individuals, as above, and more just another wardrobe hack any woman can add to her arsenal. With a host of female friends and the kind of style that has a fluid, androgynous take on rock’n’roll, this must have been something that Grimshaw had half an eye on.
But how to wear the collection without looking like you’ve stolen something from your partner’s wardrobe? Make like Kate and mix a skinny jean and a boot with that coat. Tousled blonde hair and massive black shades will also help. Or a kilt with one of those jumpers would be a good update of the Daria – cartoon, not supermodel – emo look. Put together like that, you’ll want to wear it right away, whatever your gender.
