In Fashion, Gender Lines Are Blurring

Ms. Wesson and Aimee Cho, her business partner, have, after all, poured their style convictions into 1.61, a year-old gender-free label built largely on loosefitting trousers, swagger coats and easy shirts — items that they wear themselves and offer in varying sizes to both women and men.

They are among the latest in a raft of designers to capitalize on fashion’s gender blur, that narrowing of the sexual divide that earlier this year emerged on the runways of top tier designers like Rick Owens and Alessandro Michele of Gucci, each bent on eroding the once rigid demarcation between conventionally feminine and masculine clothes.