‘ When it comes to lesbians, clothes can definitely shape our place in the world,” says the fashion writer Eleanor Medhurst”. They can either make us visible to others in our area or make us invisible to the rest of the world.
She takes the case of Christina, Queen of Sweden in the 17th centuries. While Christina’s gender remains imprecise, there is proof she felt emotionally towards women. Her clothing options also speak to some homosexuals now, Medhurst included, in the way that she toyed with prejudices”. She did play with sex through her personal- presentation,” says Medhurst”. She was frequently, throughout her career, mixing masculine and feminine attire, “wearing people’s shoes, tops and vests, as well as sophisticated women’s gowns and skirts.
Christina is only one of the subjects of Medhurst’s most recent book, Unsuitable: A Story of Lesbian Fashion, which charts the variety of clothes worn by women-loving women throughout history with their personal lives frequently kept secret or their romantic relationships glossed off as friendships.
Le Monocle’s 1920s women included in the collection, which featured everything from waistcoats and relationships to dresses and bobs set in hand waves. Stormé DeLarverie, a drag queen who some claim threw the first blow at the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, is also a king of the sport. She had frequently dress in tailored suits or sport leather jackets while performing on her other day job as a bouncer. Medway delves into the styles of those who were lesbians or who may have identified with today’s LGBTQ+ community, even if such labels did n’t exist in their time.
It comes at a time when” lesbian clothing “is bursting up into the mainstream. Although the gay community itself is a diverse society, one definition may be clothing characteristically worn or inspired by homosexuals, which frequently violates gendered expectations. In May, Kristen Stewart, who Medhurst describes as” a hero of 2020s homosexual- chic”, delivered tank top and sports bras in the reach gay movie Love Lies Bleeding. In February, the New York Times celebrated the fashion brand Kallmeyer, famous for its matches and waistcoats, as serving” gay elegant, for all”. Gay and queer clothing can be seen in Muna, Young MA, and Renee Rapp, as well as in the BBC’s most recent gay dating series I Kissed A Girl, which featured declaration boots, rings, and snapbacks. The queer satirical film Bottoms, starring Ayo Edebiri, serves up stereotypical lesbian staples – corduroy trousers, dungarees and flannel shirts.
” Lesbians are having a bit of a cultural moment,” says Medhurst, who has herself played a part. Having set up her blog Dressing Dykes during the pandemic, her TikTok account now has more than 100, 000 followers.
However, the history of “lesbian fashion” is complex. Lesbians ‘ clothing has n’t always been viewed as cool in younger society. Often, the way lesbians dress, particularly those wearing masculine clothing, has been seen as unfashionable, a point of intrigue or just plain ugly. In Medhurst’s book, she explores the 19th- century life of Anne Lister, dubbed” the first modern lesbian”, who wore gentlemen’s braces and black – at the time deemed a masculine colour – alongside bonnets and ribbons. Lister’s appearance was n’t liked by all her contemporaries: she was referred to pejoratively as” Gentleman Jack” – the nickname later used as the title for the BBC drama about her life.
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” Lesbian fashion has gone in and out of mainstream fashion,” says Medhurst. In the late 19th century, male impersonators flourished in Victorian Britain and the US, not all were lesbians, but some possibly were. At least one unofficial marriage between the drag queen Annie Hindle and another woman was occurring. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were among the contributors to British Vogue in the 1920s when lesbian couple Dorothy Todd and Madge Garland served as editor and fashion editor, respectively.
The term “lesbian chic” was featured on the front cover of New York magazine in the spring of 1993, along with a portrait of a sauve-looking kd lang, the Canadian musician and lesbian icon. Later that year, lang would pose in a three- piece suit on the front cover of Vanity Fair, reclining in a barber’s chair with the supermodel Cindy Crawford, wearing a swimsuit, pretending to shave her face.
However, lesbians themselves have not always gotten behind the commodification of the lesbian look. Lesbian critics who attacked the sanitized portrayals of lesbians in the 1990s mainstream, which favoured more airbrushed versions of the lesbian aesthetic, were cited in a blog post about the concept of “lesbian chic” from lang to the TV drama The L Word. Models were typically white, slim, and without body hair.
The whole concept of” lesbian chic feels frustrating for some lesbians”, says Medhurst”, because the clothes that they have been wearing have been seen as being unfashionable, and anti- fashion, and ugly. Now, suddenly, they’re great and they’re fine. So there’s that element of it being like: ‘ Oh, but you hated these clothes!’ Some criticize the mainstream adoption of stereotypical accessories, ranging from carabiners to everyday footwear, while others support it.
But today at least there is greater, though still not complete, diversity when it comes to what it means to look like or be a lesbian, from butch through to high- femme, with the lesbian cultural scene also encompassing trans, bisexual and queer identities.
While Medhurst understands the frustrations of some lesbians, she also thinks there are benefits”. There are many stereotypes of lesbian style that are practical or comfortable, and I believe there is a huge positive component to them being in mainstream fashion for women because women have historically been compelled to avoid wearing comfortable or practical clothing.
Ultimately, lesbian fashion offers” ways that we can play with gender roles, categories of sexuality, ways that we are or are not allowed to be,” says Medhurst. For some lesbians, and the LGBTQ+ community more broadly, clothing is a vital form of self- expression, it’s a means of signalling identity to the world, whether discreetly or overtly. As Medhurst concludes:” Fashion is often thought of as being quite a frivolous thing. But it’s actually incredibly important, personally and politically.”
Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion, by Eleanor Medhurst is out now ( Hurst Publishers )