Our of curiosity, I just checked to see what the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion had to say about unisex clothing in the 1970s. The index pointed me to an article about Rudi Gernreich and this:

Attempts to develop unisex clothing in the 1970s had about as much success as the bloomer did in the 1850s. Even though women had adopted pants, they did not want to dress the same as men. Sexual distinctions remained even when a woman borrowed her husband’s shirt. It was not supposed to look the same on the woman. So it seems that the tradition of distinguishing the sexes through their clothing remains intact today.

Does this remind anyone else of the description of Earth in Douglas Adams' classic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- "mostly harmless"? What about the resistance to women in pants? When I moved to DC in 1976, there were still restaurants where a pant-suited woman was unwelcome. (No matter how expensive the suit!) And yes, we still distinguish between the sexes through clothing, but not the same way we did in 1850 or 1950 or 1980.Now I am even more eager to get this next project underway!

I am nearly finished with the proposal for the next book, on unisex trends from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s. Thanks to the fashion cycle and “That Seventies Show”, the superficial outlines of these trends are fairly familiar to the general public. As usual, my intent is to reveal how complicated the movement was (and I chose that word intentionally.).

The unisex movement – which includes female firefighters, Roosevelt Greer’s needlepoint and “Free to be…You and me” -- was a reaction to the restrictions of rigid concepts of sex and gender roles. Unisex clothing was a manifestation of the multitude of possible alternatives to gender binaries in everyday life. To reduce the unisex era to long hair vs. short hair, skirts vs. pants and yes, pink vs. blue is to perpetuate that binary and ignore the real creative pressure for alternatives that emerged during this period.

But what alternatives were posed, and why? For the most part, unisex meant more masculine clothing for girls and women. Attempts to feminize men's appearance turned out to be short-lived, not permanent changes. The underlying argument in favor of rejecting gender binaries turns out to have been another binary: a forced decision between gender identities being a product of nature or nurture. For a while, the "nurture" side was winning. Gender roles were perceived to be socially constructed, learned patterns of behavior and therefore subject to review and revision. Unisex fashions were one front in the culture wars of the late 60s and 70s -- a war between people who believed that biology is destiny and those who believed that human agency could override DNA.

The working title is “Sex and Unisex: The Unfinished Business of the 1970s”. Because it’s clear to me from today’s culture wars that the sexual revolution is turning out to be more like the 100 Years War.