Comme Un Garçon

In her book The New Garconne, dedicated to today’s grown-up tomboy, with doffs of the trilby to Katharine Hepburn, Joan Didion, Tilda Swinton and Stella Tennant, Navaz Batliwalla describes the wo/man duality as an harmonious yin-yang of masculine and feminine influences; the highbrow complemented by the humble. There’s a sense of soothing serenity in this pairing, like the sartorial marriage that couples a mannish silhouette with a languid silk blouse.

That’s the allure of the modern epicene, with an added tinge of sensuality and a “do whatever, wear whatever” approach.  

How to map the conflict? When all becomes rigid or categorical (masculine | feminine); when there’s no longer any borrowing or blending or dissolving, catalysing a sartorial divide or a rift rather than a mutual coexistence. Like a spiralling marriage, or an unravelling thread, separation can seem imminent.