About this Event
Unsuitable
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.
Eleanor Medhurst
Eleanor Medhurst is a fashion historian with an undergraduate degree in Fashion and Dress History and a Master’s in History of Design and Material Culture, both from the University of Brighton. Eleanor specialises in lesbian fashion history and runs a blog called Dressing Dykes, which she has written over 30 articles for, ranging from ‘Two White Dresses: The Fashion of Lesbian Weddings’ to ‘The Lesbian History of Short Hair’. She has built a substantial social platform over recent years, releasing content on her corresponding Dressing Dykes Tiktok and Instagram for her engaged online community.
Eleanor has been featured in Grazia, Cosmopolitan and The Vintage Woman Magazine, and of her articles was recently spotlighted in actress Gillian Anderson’s new audio show What Do I Know?!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Blackwell's Bookshop, 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, United Kingdom
GBP 5.00
