be one of the defining menswear fashion silhouettes of 2021. If male-identifying celebrities have one fashion super-power, it’s that their wearing something amounts to both an endorsement and a permission slip. The more famous guys wear something, the easier it is for regular guys to try it. So every time another style icon—Harry Styles, Dan Levy, Jeremy O. Harris, and let’s not forget Young Thug all the way back in 2016—wears a silhouette borrowed from womenswear, it means many more young men are going to say yes to the dress. (Or at least, “Maybe.” It’s been a long road!)

At first glance, the menswear dress might seem uniquely designed for maximum provocation at a time when the right-wing is dangerously dedicated to policing gender norms. But Cudi in his flowing, sweet but unprecious frock suggests that the dress is as much about comfort as raising eyebrows. (Countless young men swapping basketball shorts for this season’s easygoing men’s and gender fluid skirts, and Harry Styles gussied in his Gucci gown and buckled up in Chopova Lowena, would agree.) 

It also points to a more seismic shift in fashion’s gendered garment dynamics. For almost a century, as any fashion historian (or high fashion Twitter head) will tell you, the pant suit was the standard from which all other silhouettes departed. Dressing gender-neutral or gender-fluid meant wearing something derived from the men’s suit. Now, the dress may be slowly usurping that role: it’s relaxed and universally wearable, a Big Fit in just one garment. Even the new suits seem kind of, well, gown-y. Men are feeling an increasing need to experiment, and an increasing comfort with doing so—an acceleration of the work done for decades by queer people who had far fewer hangups about shopping in all departments of the store.

Cudi’s dress is an instant classic. Conceived with Abloh as a tribute to Kurt Cobain, whose birthday was last Monday and who is, of course, a north star for the current generation of menswear dress fanatics, it’s half Princess Diana—classic and Laura Ashley-ish chintz—and half grunge sweetie. (Cudi also paid tribute to SNL legend Chris Farley with a T-shirt under a green Cobain-y mohair cardigan in his other appearance.) Abloh, en route back from Daniel Lee’s top secret Bottega Veneta show held at Berlin’s Berghain nightclub (you read that right!), spoke to GQ about creating the look, and where the dress fits into the fashion ecosystem. “I hope today there’s some kid in middle America that feels empowered by what Cudi used our privilege and platform to do,” he says.

How did the idea for the dress come together? It’s a tribute to Kurt Cobain—what did you and Cudi discuss next?