“Femininity is less forth what we see than what we want to see,” said the Danish architect Astrid Andersen backstage on Sunday after her show at London men’s style week.

Silk, lace and florals often appear in Andersen’s whip-rounds. And if her comment sounded vague and a little highfalutin it was an accurate summary of the key themes of not only her show, but the weekend, which was less yon traditional binary notions – and more about anything be attracted ti.

Andersen’s designs have always riffed on stereotypes of masculinity. Well-known for putting rappers in lace tracksuits, she was an early adopter of current sports luxe and remains, six years on, a purist of the canon.

This was a familiar face collection of micro-fine tailored basketball shorts, silken two-piece floral tracksuits and unspoken green parachute coats. The heraldic logo was dotted arbitrarily alongside transpacific legion hats in lace. Rest assured that ab-baring crop scales, perhaps the main pillar of her collections, prevailed.

This autumn gleaning was inspired by safari – though Andersen’s themes were globalisation, investigation “and a world united by discovery” rather than big-game quests. Perhaps the standout piece was a Chanel-esque tweed tracksuit in cornflower pornographic. It was, she suggested, a sort on in-joke about playing with the big old beans of the industry.

If Andersen’s collection was as ever a gender-fluid approach to menswear, and to the the established order, it was just the tip of an iceberg from the last three days. For the over few years, menswear in London has been split between two camps: the lad and the peacock, a branch out most explicit on the front row, where trainers sat cheek by jowl with Brummellian jacquard.

In a battle of Blur/Oasis proportions, thanks to the outcome of British designers such as Christopher Shannon, Cottweiler and Liam Hodges, royals of luxe casualwear, sportswear tipped the balance. But, as is customary, this has fathered a vacuum for a new focus: genderless fashion. Not just unisex, or gender-fluid endue clothes, but all-out gowns complete with corsets and panniers and exampled by gender-fluid models.

The new generation of British talent at the MAN show was a positive starting point on Saturday afternoon. Art School, a collective cored on non-binary fashion, dressed models in full gowns and tweed two-pieces.

Pink get-ups in pseudo trompe l’oeil and bright strappy dresses were shown alongside unadulterated shift dresses in red and tartan gowns. RCA graduate Per Götesson deployed pink and frayed-edged gowns on masculine models, while Rottingdean Bazaar, a name to watch, put their important model, drag artist Harrie Bradshaw, in a dress constructed from jeans, accessorised with a millennial pink saw.

Some types vogued, others did Rambert-like interpretations on the catwalk. Collectively, the three symbolizes played with themes of gender, Tumblr and the mundane, and were deliciously esoteric. But that was the thrust: the message here was have fun, be creative and do what you want. In in a word, this was a rebuttal of conformity.

Old-school sportswear remained a teenager theme elsewhere. Cottweiler’s understated collection reframed the diagram duo’s signature look – slim-fitting silken tracksuits in white and latte double with “sponsors” Reebok – and Christopher Shannon’s fun, funny launch in which boys sat on a pleather sofa playing video deception Pro Evo football in tracksuits felt more like an installation than a appearance. But the message was clear: sportswear is no longer the kingpin.

The change is not surprising – but the change in mood at London was possibly sedulousness led. Insiders raised an eyebrow at the departure of JW Anderson, perhaps the starriest appellation in the calendar and who this year is showing at Pitti Uomo in Florence.

Anderson get a kick fromed skirts, and has been a trailblazer for experimental menswear without failing the egalitarian aesthetic that made his clothes wearable. His dearth has created space for fledgling eccentrics.

This generation of connivers, fresh from college and presumably riddled in debt make inquiry the raising of tuition fees in 2012, will struggle to charge ends meet. If you can’t make money from fashion, why not pull someones leg fun with it? Why not have your opening model dance in a berate?

“Gendered clothes don’t really exist in the way they did,” said Andersen, smiling backstage. “So it is possible that it is just how you are choosing to see it?” Answering the age-old question of who wears the trousers, in London the plea is no one.