okay but on the topic of nonbinary fashion, I would really love to see dresses expressly designed to be worn with binders or by breastless persons
because dresses can be comfortable and weather-appropriate and fun, but that doesn’t mean I want my goddamn boobs on display, and it’s really fucking jarring on days when I want to:
a) wear a dress because comfort
b) appear flat-chested
and literally can’t, because it either ruins the line of the dress or my sports bra or binder is showing at the neck or back or shoulder
plus and also, in a more general sense: why the FUCK is it so impossible to find soft, simple dresses that aren’t pastel or lacey or floral or patterned with butterflies or other “feminine” prints, or which aren’t only plain black? maybe this is just my lifelong seasonal allergy to fashion acting up again, but it always seems like dresses get divided into industry ‘types’, and if you want something loose, made of a soft, stretchy, cottony material, or which is light for hot days, then it’s probably not going to be available in dark, plain colours unless it’s designed for someone over fifty (which is a different style problem), or have anything patterned on it that doesn’t scream ‘FEMININE’
and as someone who likes wearing flowy stuff for comfort purposes but feels deeply uncomfortable with femme stylings, that really pisses me off
basically MOAR NONBINARY FASHION OPTIONS PLS
Well, they aren’t likely to color a dress for hot weather in black, because dark colors absorb the heat, whereas light colors or white reflect it. You would get too hot in a black or say, navy blue, dress, even if it was made of a light cotton. But for the rest, yes, good question.
the fashion industry puts functional pockets on clothes made for babies and routinely makes summer items from polyester. I think it can stretch to letting me choose what colour I want to wear in the fucking sun.
I can’t speak toward the flat-chested dresses (unfortunately), but for less patterned, I know there are a few options on ModCloth that might be worthwhile. Also they tend to have pockets!!
Y'all need to look up dress styles and google “[style] + color.” What OP wants is called a shirt dress or a button down dress and they come in all sorts of colors and materials. They can also be paired with pants if you want to wear pants that day.
The fashion industry has literally everything. If you want to find it then learn what you’re actually looking for. It seems pretty ridiculous to tout being “allergic to fashion” and then complaining about how the fashion industry is suposedly failing you. That is not the industry’s fault.
This is truly where the internet can help you out. Research different styles of casual dresses and start googling. You’ll be shocked at the incredible variety out there.
friend, do not tell me what I fucking want.
I do not want a shirt dress or a button down dress; I’m 5′9 with curves and even if I liked wearing dresses with lots of buttons, which I don’t, they tend to look shit on me.
I do not want to have to buy clothes online in order to get what I want; I’m cool doing that for t-shirts and tank tops, because their sizing is generally consistent, but everything else, I need to be able to try on first.
I do not want to have a demonstrably comic remark about my personally complicated relationship with the fashion industry used to handwave the equally demonstrable biases and conventions in the fucking fashion industry, which fails a lot of fucking people, particularly those of us who are plus-sized, gender-noncomforming, trans, nonbinary or any combination thereof. pointing me to an existing style of dress that’s still designed for thin cisgendered women in bras is not helpful.
what I want is to be able to go into a regular fucking shopping complex and browse a selection of clothes, in a variety of styles, from a variety of outlets, designed for people like me - which is to say, not separated into men’s and women’s sections, but styled and marketed on the radical premise that anyone might be interested in anything, and sold by people who know what a fucking binder is. in fact, being able to buy a binder somewhere NOT the internet would be fucking super!
what I do not want is for fucking strangers on the internet to completely miss the actual point of my post, which is queer inclusivity in fashion design and an end to binary-only options as default, and act as though they’re REALLY FUCKING CLEVER for suggesting google as a solution to a problem that searching through existing options cannot actually solve.
now, if anyone wants to chime in with suggested bricks-and-mortar locations that sell nonbinary-friendly fashion, or list some brands like butchbaby that are actually trying to address the problem I’m describing, THAT would be helpful.
First of all I never told you to go shipping online. As a matter of fact, I hate online shopping too because it’s so imprecise. I recommended Googling styles in order to learn more about them because when you’re looking to fit a body outside the the mainstream industry then you need a plan of attack, and you need to know what you’re looking for and what to ask for from the staff at a brick and mortar store when you go there to shop. You also need to know just what kind of clothing you’re looking for in their inventory. You would have a hard time finding a pair of steel-toed leather work boots at Macy’s if you didn’t know what kind of inventory Macy’s carried.
Secondly, I recommended shirt dresses to you because I am five foot two, 220 pounds, very fat, and yet have a collection of shirt dresses that are comfortable and fashionable to wear that also cover the thick undershirts I wear, which other dresses don’t do. I thought this might help because it is in fact a very versatile style of dress that comes in a lot of varieties and is easy to adapt with minimum accessories, and still provide a lot of coverage for people who want coverage. It is only a few of such dresses that are designed for “thin cis women who wear bras.” Many button down dresses are designed for plus-sized people because it is in fact such a versatile style, easy to adapt to different body types and different needs. Button down dresses are the shit.
Now, if that doesn’t fit your personal sense of style, that’s fine. That just means you need a different style, and a different plan of attack, hence why learning more about fashion via the internet is so valuable. It will also help you find stores that carry these items, where you can then go to in person and peruse their inventory at your leisure. Finding a line of fashion clothes and then hunting them down to their physical location is actually quite satisfying and doable. I’ve done it plenty of times myself.
You seem to be convinced that the fashion world is strictly delineated into a binary options, that only men have such and such designs and that women have other designs, and never the twain shall meet, and the only thing I am trying to say is that this is not completely true. The fashion world does abide by those societal rules but it also carries plenty of alternative fashion lines. As the demand for these clothes grows the landscape of products shifts and grows and changes to accommodate it. The real problem in my experience is that finding these kinds of clothes tends to be locked by region. You would have more luck searching in San Francisco than in Tennessee.
What I am trying to point out is that the world of clothes and fashion is versatile beyond our wildest dreams, and you don’t have to plumb the depths of haute couture or spend lots of money on online clothes trying to find it.
but I do, apparently, have to live in America.
[heaving sigh]
look. I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful. but the point I’m making here - the point you’re not addressing - is that I shouldn’t need a “plan of attack” in order to shop for clothes without triggering my dysphoria. while the world of clothes and fashion is theoretically very versatile, as a day to day experience, speaking as someone who’s genderqueer, the fact that pretty much EVERY SHOP is either gendered in who it sells to or divides its range by gender is potentially enough to trigger an anxiety attack. finding clothes and places to shop that don’t make me want to rip my skin off isn’t some novelty fashion funtimes treasure hunt; it’s a sign of the fact that I’m socially fucking invisible. it’s great that tracking shit down is something you enjoy, but my inability to feel the same has nothing to do with my knowledge of dress styles.
scroll back up this thread and look at your responses. you haven’t so much as acknowledged queer experience as the actual topic at hand. I don’t know if that’s because you don’t recognise it as a separate problem to the general issue of “people struggling to find clothes” or because you’re just so fixated on what seems obvious to you that you haven’t considered its relevance, but either way, you’re not exactly disproving the thesis of queer invisibility in fashion.