Unsuitable : a history of lesbian fashion / Eleanor Medhurst.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Medhurst, Eleanor, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lesbians--Clothing.

Lesbians.

Lesbian culture.

Fashion--History.

Fashion.

Gender identity.

Sociology.

Fashion--Social aspects.

sociology.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

xi, 268 pages, 28 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits (some color) ; 24 cm

Other Title:

History of lesbian fashion

Place of Publication:

London : Hurst and Company, 2024.

Summary:

"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. "Unsuitable" restores 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, "Vogue" editors 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. "Unsuitable" lights it up for the world to see, in all its finery" --Sleeve.

Contents:

Introduction

Part One: We Were Always Here

1. Tunics and Violets: Sappho and Her Afterlives

2. Christina of Sweden, Girl King

3. Anne Lister: Diaries and Dress

4. Literary Lovers: 1910s Japan

Part Two: Paris to Harlem: The Lesbian 1920s

5. Paris Lesbos: The Sapphic Capital

6. The Queer Modernism of British Vogue

7. The Complete Appearance of a Lady: Trans Lesbians in Weimar Berlin

8. In the Life: Lady Lovers of the Harlem Renaissance

Part Three: A Butch/Femme Interlude

9. Looking 'Right': The Mid-Century Lesbian Bar

10. A Note on Femmes

Part Four: Miraculous Masculinity

11. Breeches Roles and Female Husbands: Cross-Dressed Britain in the 1700s

12. Variety: Music Hall, Male Impersonation and a Turning Century

13. Gladys Bentley: A Sartorial History

14. Stormé DeLarverie and the Dawn of the Drag King

Part Five: Lesbian Politics, Political Lesbians

15. The Lesbian Threat of the Suffragettes

16. Uniforms of the Second Wave: Lesbian Feminist Dress Codes

17. T-Shirts: The Billboards of the Body

18. The Fashion of Liberation

Afterword.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-256) and index.

ISBN:

1805260960

9781805260967

OCLC:

1395538734

Publisher Number:

90100214328