The current wave of unisex fashion has been building for the past six months – from Saint Laurent, JW Anderson and Hermès’s spring/summer 2015 collections to Topshop and The Kooples on the high street. But you know it’s gone mainstream when Selfridges decides to devote a whole section to what they’re calling “agender” clothing. Their concept for men’s and women’s designs reads almost like a religious text, extolling “a genderless attitude to fashion” that is “transcending traditional notions of ‘his’ and ‘hers’ ”. The agender areas were designed by Faye Toogood, and they bring together brands with a longstanding tradition of non-gender clothing, such as Commes des Garçons, Maharishi and Yohji Yamamoto, plus humbler brands such as Trapstar, Underground and Pigalle, along with a few well-known couturiers, including Jeremy Scott and Rad Hourani – the only designer to show a unisex collection at Paris haute couture. All presumably find it liberating not to have to design for one sex only.

The genderless attitude means huge padded jackets that could easily suit either sex (better for warmth than charm, but still endlessly interesting for those of us who mostly wear trousers); the use of pink in apparently male garments; and larger sizes in something evidently female. In London, it is all displayed on both the male and female floors (but with gents’ and ladies’ toilets, and baby change on both). It’s worth noting that while the male floor is filled with girls and grannies, the female floor isn’t exactly thronging with blokes. It sports, among other things, a hippopotamus in a frock. This reminds me of the child at the zoo who asks whether it is a lady hippopotamus or a gentleman hippopotamus and is told “that should only be of interest to another hippopotamus” – doubtless a view in tune with agender.

navy blue bridesmaid dresses

One could say that the clothes on the male floor are more sensible than the designs for females. For older women, particularly, it’s not surprising that the more elegantly straightforward male styles might seem a better bet than sexy frills – they’re certainly more wearable than a navy and white tunic with “Girl Power” across the breast, which I saw on the women’s floor.

The whole thing reminds me of the Christmas arguments we had about whether there should be areas for boys’ toys (engines) and girls’ toys (pink). And since the designs are for adults, I wonder whether this would be a delight for cross dressers?

Of course, a lot of clothes – particularly those designed for a specific activity, such as shooting gear or laboratory uniforms – are much the same for each sex anyhow, but it’s good to have the same idea in ordinary clothes available to anybody – as any girl who has ever borrowed her brother’s sweaters would agree.

Questions still remain: do genuinely sexless trousers all have a fly? Or none? What would the woman I saw in a hijab be going to choose? When it comes to evening dress, should we all wear a black or a white tie, and do men have to start scratching their heads over whether to wear long or short, as women do?

It will be interesting to know, if genderless fashion really catches on, whether it means simply that clothes could be worn by either sex; or whether there will be no adaptation of a style to suit the sex that hasn’t traditionally worn it: say, male nurses wearing skirts. No sex discrimination: good, no sexual variation: bad. We shall see. Meantime, it’s an excellent way to be able to compare ours with theirs; good luck to it.

evening dresses adelaide