Mark Bryan On The Future Of Genderless Dressing

When a sixty-something american football coach and engineer starts wearing skirts and heels to the office, the world takes notice. Mark Bryan talks to Patty Huntington about going viral, designer stilettos and the future of genderless dressing.

- Jeffrey Yan

If you're going to have a fashion crisis, it might as well be at a Balenciaga show. So learned Mark Bryan after nabbing an invite to Balenciaga's spring/summer 2022 show in Paris-a reward for a year of breaking the Internet by rocking up to his engineering job in a skirt and stilettos.

For his first big fashion show appearance, he chose a dramatic black ankle-length quilted puffer jacket with an off-the-shoulder neckline from Berlin menswear brand GmbH's fall 2021 collection. He paired it with a pair of black Jimmy Choo boots with 95mm-high heels. A kind of hybrid between a ball gown and a designer sleeping bag, the voluminous, zippered coat had been dispatched down GmbH's runway with a bare décolletage. But Bryan added a black shirt and tie-a decision he would come to rue at the star-studded after-party. He started perspiring profusely and fled outside to the sidewalk to cool off. I sat down, and next thing I know, I'm waking up face down on the concrete with people standing around me, he recalls over Skype. I had passed out.” He was whisked by ambulance to a Paris hospital to overnight it under observation, and tests showed nothing more serious than a case of dehydration and poor fashion judgement. It was a pretty different experience, he says.

The whole past year and a bit, in fact, has been a pretty different experience for the 62-year-old Texan-born robotics engineer, who now lives in Crailsheim, Germany. Just as the grandfather of four was looking towards retirement, a completely new career path as a social media influencer opened up before him.