I rarely make plans, but I often make moves. I have never had a five-year plan, nor do I know which city I’ll be in a few months, but somehow I continue to self-actualise. I believe it’s due to my salient femininity, the force inside me that desires and receives.
This is how I find myself being whisked away on a boat in Oman on a Tuesday. A few weeks earlier, I’d received an invitation to a press trip to attend Muscat Fashion Week. I graciously accepted. I allowed a man to arrange my itinerary, another to help me onto the boat, and another to captain it. My long hair flies backward as the boat picks up speed, and the gentlemen on board prepare my lunch. Experiencing chivalry helps me tap into my femininity. Someone provides; I receive. My receptiveness finds meaning in someone’s offering. I can be soft because my femininity allows me to surrender and accept.
My femininity is magnetic, psychic and feral. She knows things before any of us do. She teaches me to trust my intuition, this innate knowing that operates on a divine feminine instinct rather than strict logic and reason.
I admire my freshly manicured almond-shaped nails and the green shimmer catching the light at the corners of my eyes. The warmth of the sun fills me, and gratitude envelops me. My phone notifications break my dreamscape, and I remember I have deadlines. I tie my long hair into a ponytail and get down to business. I respond to 26 emails, delegate some tasks, and jot down an op-ed idea before my mind swirls in a million different directions. This time, my femininity takes a backseat. When I need to organise or execute, I turn to my masculinity.
After the cruise, I head home to get ready for the fashion show. In my hotel room, I have to decide what to wear but get overwhelmed by the options in my tiny Juicy Couture luggage. The decision fatigue and some creeping social anxiety require my masculinity to tap in again. My masculinity is ambitious, generous and eager to step in. I choose to invert and pin my black blazer and wear it as an entirely new top, with some olive slacks, and my recently thrifted and personal favourite kitten-heel Bottega boots. I apply some mascara and attempt to cover up fresh pimples with the Kosas tinted moisturiser. My femininity despises unclear skin, but also accepts external beauty as it comes. My femininity taught me to detach from my physical appearance and experiment with my looks. Thanks to Beauty Club LondonSalon, the latest shift was my new hair extensions, which I was trying for funsies that week. I brush my temporary long hair and look in the mirror. Long hair/short hair, you’re still hot, my femininity affirms me.
My femininity and masculinity stand still like the mountains around us. As we drive to the Royal Opera House, the mountain silhouettes around us blur. It becomes hard to detect where the mountains end and where the shadows start. Like this liminal space in nature, my femininity and masculinity dance in this transitional margin. My ability to receive requires my ability to act. My softness holds power because my strength gives it shape. My own feminine and masculine energies mirror each other, together striving for equitable balance. They don’t rely on each other, but they lean on each other. They are not binaries, but dualities.
Dualities complement each other through contrast. While binaries are social constructs, dualities are natural and art. In the world of true fashion, femininity transcends the body and the restrictive gender binaries we’ve been taught to accept. Fashion draws from the natural, including the synergy between masculine and feminine—a dynamic the designers at Muscat Fashion Week understand intimately.
In fashion design, this manifests through deliberate juxtaposition of the two. Russian brand Solangel’s latest collection features militaristic shoulder pads paired with flowing long skirts: structure meets fluidity. Omani brand Kawashi explores this same tension through velvet abayas with netted shoulders that simultaneously conceal and reveal. Moroccan brand Maison Sara Chraïbi presents sharp-shouldered blazers accessorised with sculptural berets, followed moments later by a sea blue dress with a waist-cinching corset. Each piece demonstrates how masculine and feminine elements amplify each other—femininity gains meaning through the presence of masculinity, and vice versa. As the show comes to a close, the venue erupts in applause. I join them, moved by the art. The show was stunning in totality—every design element and production detail came together to create something new from the interplay of feminine and masculine. The true bravado in fashion is beauty.
This liminal dialogue is even continued on a global scale, where, among the Spring/Summer 2026 collections, tailoring loosens its grip and softness asserts quiet authority. At Altuzarra’s NYFW show, structured leather barn jackets and tailored blazers were coupled with semi-sheer gowns and sculptural skirts, consciously collapsing the line between utilitarian and ethereal. Jason Wu played with layering, pairing soft silk twill and organza panels over tailored jackets to articulate both vulnerability and control in a single silhouette. Meanwhile, Paris saw power shoulders and crisp tailoring at houses such as Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Celine, counterbalanced by fluid skirts and delicate chiffon—a visual conversation on what it means to blend the masculine with the feminine.
There is no singular way of understanding femininity. It is both deeply personal and universal, evolving continuously as fashion evolves alongside it, symbiotically. Back at the hotel, I begin to get ready for bed. While brushing my long hair, I decide I’m ready to return to my natural short hair. Maybe it’s time to make some plans and schedule your hair appointment, my masculinity gently offers. I send Louise, my hair extensions specialist and now friend, a text to do so. I look out the window, and it’s too dark to see the mountains, but I know they are there. I slip into an oversized men’s jersey. Menswear helps me feel secure in my femininity; no rigid binaries, just dualities; no conformities, just synergies. I drift off to sleep thinking about femininity (and masculinity) at Muscat Fashion Week.
This story first appeared in the June/July 2026 issue of GRAZIA Singapore.
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