Dressing for the Female Gaze: What the ‘Boyfriend is Embarrassing’ Discourse Gets Right About Style”
This article was written by Demi Karanikolaou for Harper’s Bazaar Greece. You can find it here.
“Could you pass me my blazer - the oversized one with the wide shoulders?” I asked a stylist friend during a London night out; the exaggerated shoulders and metallic snakeskin stilettos made my already tall frame hard to miss, a far cry from the good girl next door. Around me, the group dressed in a similar manner: deconstructed pieces by Korean designer Rokh, all-black ensembles, bold accessories. Our outfits aimed for cool, not conventionally pretty - despite our group being mostly single. As the Espresso Martinis arrived, the topic was Chanté Joseph’s viral essay about how having a boyfriend is embarrassing in 2025. And then it hit me: we dressed to impress, yes, but the audience was one another, not men. Style has always mirrored what women need from their moment: the post-war polish of the ’50s; the hippy ’70s; the late-2000s hyper-display - Hervé Léger bandage dresses and sky-high Louboutin platforms - an aesthetic built to please the male gaze. But on today’s runways and sidewalks, the message is different: presence, not permission. Saint Laurent’s wide shoulders claim space, Alaïa’s artsy shapes find sensuality in structure rather than exposure, Phoebe Philo prioritises the wearer. With the #girlgaze hashtag gathering traction on TikTok, we’re also seeing jewellery pieces grow bolder than the average man might choose, shoes shifting toward comfort, and oversized or experimental silhouettes allowing a woman’s personality to arrive first.
Presence as a dress code
When life shifts, your wardrobe follows. As psychologist and leadership coach Sofia Kakkava told me over a call, “When you’re in a healthy place, you start dressing to express yourself. I constantly see this evolution in women. When a woman begins to genuinely like herself, she shows up differently - ultimately, fashion becomes a form of freedom. It stops being about perfection and becomes about the permission to show her authentic self and to feel good in her own skin.”
The same internal recalibration is happening for many powerful thirty-something women: Dr. Gigi Graziosi Casimiro, a professor at the Institut Français de la Mode, can pinpoint when. “There have been big changes in my overall look and self-acceptance over the last three years, as my move to Paris allowed me to step away from some of the standards I grew up with as a woman in a Latin-Italian family raised in South America - for example I spent more than a decade as a blonde, influenced by the old ‘ men prefer blondes’ mentality. I am progressively less interested in enhancing curves and more into experimenting with deconstructing silhouettes and layers.” Her next comment sounded like a declaration of freedom: “It's a style the average man probably wouldn’t appreciate - and that’s fine, because it’s about the character I’m building.”
For the wearer first
Do designers see the same shift in consumer sentiment themselves? As luxury shoemaker Jennifer Chamandi - who dresses Taylor Swift and Kate Middleton - told me, her namesake brand is all about empowerment: “I have been on a mission from day one to ensure women feel their very best and my designs combine precision with engineering to ensure the most comfortable shoes through our patented Eye of the Needle design. Our mantra is Step into your Power - from the brand’s inception almost ten years ago I have been designing purely for women to ensure they feel their most empowered selves. I believe a woman should always dress for herself first, because once she feels confident the possibilities are limitless.”
The needs of her customers are ultimately driving designs: “Our customer is very much a woman on a mission - she is dynamic and needs to move about with speed and elegance. She is not prepared to sacrifice comfort for style - so she is leaning towards silhouettes and heel heights that can give her both. Over the past few seasons we have certainly noticed women gravitating towards lower heel heights, such as our best seller Paolo ballet flats and our Mattia 65 block heeled pumps.” That does not mean that classics will disappear: “The high heel will never go out of style - and our classic Lorenzo pump is still our bestseller - but we have seen women focus a lot more on building out their everyday wardrobe with pieces that are as stylish as they are practical. We call it functional elegance.”
Natalie Benmayor of Capsule Eleven, Grimes and Tyla favourite, reminded me that bold pieces have always been a language of power: “As a designer, I have always believed jewellery is one of the purest forms of self-expression. I often think of Queen Nefertiti, a woman so devoted to her adornment that it is believed she shaved her head to showcase her tall crown and neck jewellery. She was considered both a style icon and a beauty of her time, not because she dressed for others, but because she embodied her personal power so fully. That approach to adornment feels incredibly resonant today.” But the notion transcends jewellery: “I see more women choosing to dress in ways that reflect who they are, even when the pieces are bold or unconventional, rather than what they feel they should be for the traditional male gaze, and that feels incredibly empowering. In my opinion, the right man gravitates toward a woman who expresses her true style, not one who edits herself for approval.”
The gaze we choose
Somewhere between the rise of sneakers and racy Mugler corsets, all of the above started to make perfect sense. It is up to every individual to decide if having a boyfriend is embarrassing, but I feel like most career-driven big-city women simply don’t spend too many brainshells on the matter - as the saying goes, they go about their life “for the girls and the gays”. With Gen Z being so focused on individuality and self-expression, the notion will inevitably only gain traction. Does this mean that a men - women divide is inevitable? Hardly. As a man once told me on a date, “I like you because you are so yourself.” Could anything, ever, be more empowering?
