Fashion gave everyone two options and called it a wardrobe. You wore what was designed for your gender, in the shapes and colours and cuts that gender had been assigned, and if that didn't feel right, that was your problem to manage. Getting dressed, which should be about expression, became about compromise for a significant number of people, and the industry that created that situation mostly shrugged.

Non-gendered fashion is sometimes framed as a niche concern or a trend for a particular cultural moment. The more accurate framing is that gendered fashion has always been a constraint, and removing it tends to expand choice rather than reduce it.