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https://theconversation.com/from-tuxedos-to-tattoos-eleanor-medhursts-unsuitable-traces-a-hidden-history-of-lesbian-fashion-244154>
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Review: Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion – Eleanor Medhurst (Hurst
Publishers)
Blues singer Gladys Bentley was a dazzling star of the Harlem Renaissance, a
period in the 1920s and ’30s when African American culture flourished in New
York City. Bentley’s risqué performances intrigued audiences. So did the
entertainer’s relationships with women.
“There are many ways to read Bentley’s life,” fashion historian Eleanor
Medhurst explains in
Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion, “but mine is,
of course, through clothing.”
She is referring to Bentley’s embrace of men’s attire. The exquisite tuxedo
captured in Bentley’s iconic publicity photographs reveals the power of dress
for “a masculine woman, a male impersonator, and an unabashed lesbian”.
Medhurst began developing her ideas about fashion on her blog
Dressing Dykes
and has popularised her work on social media via TikTok. In
Unsuitable, she
offers an engaging history that ranges across centuries and continents,
beginning with the ancient Greek poet Sappho and continuing to the present day.
Her book draws together lesbian dress styles from monocles and sailors’ attire
to “dyke” t-shirts and more.
Medhurst’s preference is for the term “lesbian”, ahead of “queer”, “gay women”
or “sapphic”. She acknowledges the relatively recent emergence of the term,
which only came into common usage in its contemporary sense towards the end of
the 19th century.
Many women in these pages called themselves lesbian, while “others might have
used different labels or none at all”. Yet for Medhurst they all “remain part
of a heritage that informs the lesbian present”, to which she adds her
distinctive voice.
Her aim with
Unsuitable is to recover lesbian fashion, though this is not a
simple task. Some women strove to blend in rather than stand out. They chose,
carefully and deliberately, to fit the feminine conventions of the day to
escape detection, and the homophobia and violence that could accompany it.
Medhurst notes that “for much of history, lesbians have had to hide themselves
in a way that has made it impossible for new ‘trends’ to arise as they do in
mainstream fashion, evolving from those that came before”. She grapples with
how to recover this sometimes hidden fashion history. In doing so, she proves
that there is plenty to explore, but that it takes a sharp eye and knowing
where to look."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
