Using ‘dress appearance […] to define who I am to others’: Everyday fashion and subjectivity among white lesbians in Brighton 2005–2015

This article introduces a longitudinal study of the changing role of dressing and fashionability in the lives of ‘ordinary’ lesbians in Brighton, England, over a decade. The everyday dress practices of lesbians in midlife are explored through firsthand responses to two directives on lesbian dress and identity in 2005 and 2015 by a small cohort of participants. The responses to a set of open-ended questions posed by the author provide a window onto the ways in which gender and sexual subjectivity is negotiated through the wearing of specific items of dress and fashion brands on an everyday basis. A key finding in 2015 has been that these women’s attitudes towards self-fashioning have changed over time according to changes in personal circumstances and psychological development in midlife, within the context of wider social and political change.