Queer Style

Abstract

Dress practices have played an important role in queer cultures in Western societies; visual codes have often been used to signify sexuality and sexual preference, whether covert or not. The visibility of queer style and its merging with mainstream fashion from the nineteenth century onwards can be traced to four historical reference points. These are: the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895 which drew attention to the ostentatious styling of the aesthetes and the bohemians, namely the dandy and the mannish lesbian; the Stonewall Riots of 1969 with the police arrest of drag queens, butch lesbians and effeminate men broadcast on national television; the AIDS Crisis, with the first case diagnosed in 1981, which placed gay men's appearance under public scrutiny and the Transgender liberation movement that has positioned gender nonconforming bodies in the public arena and has given rise to “gender fluid” fashion. This chapter is a historical overview of queer dress practices as they emerged in the nineteenth century to the fluid styles of the twenty-first millennium.

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