Mirror, Mirror: Why do we have a boy as the face for women's wear - again?

After a year of androgynous clothes on runways and transgender models stalking catwalks and seizing magazine covers, it amazes me people are stunned that Jaden Smith is the new face of Louis Vuitton women's wear.

On Monday, Nicolas Ghesquière, the French fashion house's creative director, released pictures from the luxury brand's spring campaign starring the 17-year-old son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Jaden's locks are styled high into a topknot, and he is sporting bangs. Under the Louis Vuitton moto jacket, he wears a mesh sweater with tasseled hemline, and that's paired with a black-and-white embroidered A-line skirt.

He stands confidently, legs apart, arms positioned like he's spoiling for a fight. Three female models face him. Maybe they're all flirting. Maybe he doesn't even acknowledge them. That's up for interpretation.

What's not up for interpretation are Jaden's thoughts on gender. He refuses to be put into a box. In April, he tweeted about going to Top Shop to buy "girls'" clothes, and the next month, he went to one prom in a skirt and a second prom in the same white Batman suit he wore to Kim and Kanye's wedding.

I've heard many say Jaden and his younger sister, Willow, are entitled and spoiled. I've heard criticism that their parents - including the Philly-bred Will, who, of course, should know better - would be better off acting more like parents and less like their children's friends.

And then people are furthering the falsehood that nobody dresses like that in the 'hood, so Jaden had better watch it.

Uh, hello?

This is not 1992. It's 2016, and young men of all races are experimenting with clothing that was once limited to the auspices of "women's wear." This is not a sign that their parents failed them or that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It's a sign of change. That we can express ourselves through clothing without fear of a beat down - in or out of the 'hood - is progress.

What I struggle with is this: Louis Vuitton is yet another luxury company that is using a guy - a petite 17-year-old one, for heaven's sake - as the face of its women's brand.

How can a grown woman think she can fit comfortably into clothes that skim the body of a hipless, bustless boy?

Of course, everyone's doing it.

In September, Acne's creative director, Jonny Johansson, cast his 12-year-old son, Frasse, in the label's women's wear ad campaign. The younger Johansson pranced around in a long pink coat that pooled at his feet.

And all throughout the spring 2016 collections, runway designers from Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy to Shayne Olivier for Hood by Air sent men down the runway dressed in clothes that were part of their women's collections.

It's hard to be a woman who shops. First, high fashion required us to be waiflike - like adolescent girls. Now our bodies are supposed to look like the one that belongs to a boy? That's just impossible.

It's not that I wouldn't wear a skirt that Jaden wears. It's just that if he can wear it, I likely won't be able to squeeze myself in.

Jaden looks just like the guys I see wearing skirts walking with conviction through Center City - some with makeup, others without, some gay, some not. Jaden merely is on the pulse of what's happening.

But when the fashion industry promotes his image as though it's the archetypal female one, it continues to fail women, furthering a suffocating ideal.

ewellington@phillynews.com
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@ewellingtonphl