‘Gender Bending Fashion’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

From the catwalk to the sidewalk, fashion has gone gender-fluid. On March 21, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opens an exhibition, Gender Bending Fashion, that proves this trend is far from a 21st-century invention. The show combines 60-plus looks from contemporary designers such as Rei Kawakubo and Jean Paul Gaultier with historical pieces made famous by the likes of Marlene Dietrich, David Bowie, and Jimi Hendrix, drawing a line from the boyish graçonne womenswear look of the 1920s to the flamboyant “peacock revolution” menswear of the 1960s to the boundary-pushing outfits of today’s hip-hop artists. The show’s signature ensemble is a ruffled lavender frock and parasol-inspired hat by Italian designer Alessandro Trincone that Young Thug wore on the cover of his 2016 mixtape, Jeffery. “There is not such thing as gender,” the Atlanta rapper once said as part of a Calvin Klein ad campaign. “You could be a gangster with a dress, or you could be a gangster with baggy pants.”