Overview

The way we dress can show or hide who we are; make us fit in, make us stand out, or make our own community. Yet 'lesbian fashion' has been strangely overlooked. What secrets can it reveal about the lives and status of queer women through the ages? The lesbian past is slippery: often deliberately hidden, edited or left unrecorded.Unsuitablerestores to history the dazzlingly varied clothes worn by women who love women, from top hats to violet tiaras. This story spans centuries and countries, from 'Gentleman Jack' in nineteenth-century Yorkshire and Queen Christina of seventeenth-century Sweden, to Paris modernism, genderqueer Berlin, butch/femme bar culture and gay rights activists-via drag kings,Vogueeditors and the Harlem Renaissance. This book is a kaleidoscope of the margins and the mainstream, celebrating trans lesbian style, Black lesbian style, and gender nonconformity. You don't have to be queer or fashionable to be enthralled by this hidden history.Unsuitablelights it up for the world to see, in all its finery.

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9781805260967

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Reviews

'A charming, enlightening and inspiring history of a too-often overlooked identity.' -- Paul Baker, author of 'Camp!', 'Outrageous!' and 'Fabulosa!' 'An affectionate and informative history, deeply researched and bursting at the seams with interesting facts about the lives and styles of queer women from the past.' -- Diarmuid Hester, author of 'Wrong' and 'Nothing Ever Just Disappears'

Author Information

Eleanor Medhurst is a historian of lesbian fashion and author of the blogDressing Dykes. She has worked on Brighton Museum's exhibitions Queer Looks and Queer the Pier, and been interviewed byGrazia, Cosmopolitan,Cameron Esposito'sQueeryand Gillian Anderson'sWhat Do I Know?!This is her first book.

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