If ever there was a sign that distinctions between menswear and womenswear have become irrelevant, it's to be found in Paris' Faith Connexion. The brand has two showrooms in its Rue Tronchet hôtel particulier, but clothes flow freely between them, with store buyers picking up women's washed silk shirts for their men's department and men's denim jackets for their women's floors. In most cases, the only difference between what hangs on the guys' racks and the girls' racks is a few extra inches in the shoulders and the inseam and a few less at the waist. Sizing is one thing. Faith's gender-bender pièce de résistance, this season at least, was a sequin hoodie with a trompe l'oeil beaded cardigan stitched over the top. They photographed it on a male model so pretty he'd send most females into a jealous rage. (An aside: If you want to experience jealous rage, find a pic of Daria Werbowy at the Paris Vogue dinner in the brand's parachute silk jumpsuit gown. How do you feel now?)
But Faith Connexion is connecting with retailers for a reason besides fashion's current fixation on androgyny. It mostly has to do with that other obsession of ours: youth. More specifically: wasted youth. The tattered and torn jeans, the bleached-out flannel pajama pants, bondage jumpsuits dripping in D-rings and straps, leather jackets hand-painted with skulls, skirts made from shirts tied so cavalierly at the hips it looks like you could give one sleeve a tug and the little thing would drop to your ankles. If there's a collection more alienating to the over-55 set, we can't think of it. Everybody else, of course, is on a quest to look permanently 25. Faith has that demographic—and all of the wannabes—nailed.
