Ellen Page Admits Fashion Has Helped Her Feel Free
Ellen Page at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in 2014 wearing a Saint Laurent suit. Photo: Getty Images
Fashion has a transformative power — there’s a reason the movie makeover montage never gets old. The Cinderella story isn’t just a fairytale—with just one glass slipper (or really amazing pair of stilettos), a girl can go from invisible step-sister to belle of the ball. But the influence of clothing isn’t just skin deep.
In the April issue of Vogue magazine, actress Ellen Page, who came out publicly last February, admits that her sartorial sense has shifted since opening up. “I used to feel this constant pressure to be more feminine; a quiet or sometimes not-so-quiet demand—’You need to wear a dress or people will think you’re gay,” she said. “Now I feel a sense of freedom in dressing, and I’m enjoying it so much. I love wearing a Saint Laurent suit to an event.”
The 28-year-old, who will play Julianne Moore’s partner in Freeheld out later this year, isn’t the only one to embrace the kind of gender-less fashion spearheaded by Hedi Slimane. Ellen DeGeneres, who always wears pants on the red carpet, is a fan and worked with the designer on her Oscars wardrobe in 2014. Women who tend to embrace ladylike looks have also gone agender, transcending the he or she pronoun in their outfit choices. Kourtney Kardashian, Angelina Jolie, Emma Watson, Salma Hayek, Selena Gomez, and more have all ditched dresses in favor of suiting by Saint Laurent.
The fact that high-fashion designers such as Slimane, J.W. Anderson, Haider Ackerman, and Baja East, to name a few, are creating clothes without a man or woman in mind has also trickled down to include major stores like Selfridges, which is producing gender-neutral items for its department stores, and high-street shops like Zara and H&M. This shift in production obviously speaks to the fact that Page isn’t the only person who informs her identity through fashion.
As she passionately puts it: “I mean, what a gift.”
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