The controversy over crossover fashion has been changing throughout history dawning with the 18th century, when clothing was a representation of power of authority over the common worker. As then in the 19th century, clothes began to shift over to represent power between the sexes. In the 20th century, women moved to the male fashion in an attempt to gain power and position of authority, while men continued wearing the traditional men's clothing in order to maintain their symbolic prestige and dominance.
             Back in the Colonial era, it was not restricted that men had to differentiate their clothing with women. Men and women adopted the same lines of fashion, dressing in flamboyant outfits. The wealthy higher social classes were identified with diversity, and elegance due to their costumes, which comprised of long baggy jackets unbuttoned with flower patterns down the middle, tight knickers that revealed more than needed for men, and the long gowns (which seemed made out of satin) with flower ruffles and fancy ornaments for women. This style of fashion was used to symbolize the distinctions of social classes, and ranks within the society. It indicated that they were the dominant party, ideally symbolizing that the more elaborate style of fashion defined a superior status in society.
             In the 19th century, the crossover fashion emphases modernized with the social epidemic of the French Revolution. The disassociation between rank and wealth was abolished, and the emphasis was placed between the genders. The Great Masculine Renunciation which was formulated by J. C. Flugel, was the event in the nineteenth century that saw "Man give up their rights to all the brighter, gayer, more elaborate, more varied forms of ornamentation, leaving this entirely to the use of women, thereby making their own tailoring the most austere and ascetic of the arts." Women wanted to follow in this trait in the late nine
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