Twitter oracle and Fresh Prince of the future Jaden Smith has been lighting up the fashion world with his gender fluid aesthetic, so it's no wonder that Smith is the newest face of Nylon Magazine and their first solo male cover star.
Smith donned mom jeans and denim jackets for Nylon's August issue, and spoke openly on why his personal style helps other gender non-comforming youth express themselves.
"The world is going to keep bashing me for whatever I do, and I’m going to keep not caring," Smith told Nylon. "So, you know, in five years when a kid goes to school wearing a skirt, he won’t get beat up and kids won’t get mad at him... I’m taking the brunt of it so that later on, my kids and the next generations of kids will all think that certain things are normal that weren’t expected before my time."
Smith's been lauded for subverting expectations for how young black men present themselves, from going to prom in a dress to breaking new grounds in the fashion industry as a model for Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2016 womenswear campaign.
Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, who had cast Smith, told Nylon the teen represented a gender-questioning generation.
"Wearing a skirt comes as naturally to him [Smith] as it would to a woman who, long ago, granted herself permission to wear a man’s trench or a tuxedo," Ghesquière said. "Jaden Smith conveys something very interesting about the integration of a global wardrobe. He’s found an instinctive balance that makes his extraordinary attitude a new norm."
Smith embodied that attitude once again in his Nylon photoshoot, where he went doe-eyed in close-ups and posed in offbeat, free-flowing ways, with many stances similar to how female models are typically depicted.
Smith is one of many young male stars blurring gender lines in fashion. Young Thug and Frank Ocean are the latest musical artists to star in a Calvin Klein campaign. Like Smith, Young Thug also has a penchant for wearing skirts and blurring gender lines.
"There's no such thing as gender," Young Thug said, in a recent Calvin Klein campaign video.
Smith's dad actor Will Smith has commended his son's clothing choices.
"Jaden is 100 per cent fearless, he will do anything, you know?" the older Smith told BBC Radio. "So as a parent it’s scary, it’s really terrifying, but he is completely willing to live and die by his own artistic decisions and he just doesn’t concern himself with what people think.”
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