Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016

Examining autobiographies, letters, newspaper reports and photographs, this article argues that French sailor wear with its military exoticism and gender-blurring possibilities was adopted by fashionable metropolitan British and French groups in the interwar years as a recognizable signifier of an emerging gay and bisexual identity. The appropriation of the French military uniform by gay and bisexual men and by lesbians was tied, on the one hand, to their firsthand experience of travel to the Mediterranean coast, and to ideas about the Mediterranean ports as places of sexual liberalism and bohemianism that featured in contemporary ballet and the theatre. On the other hand, such promiscuous associations also drew upon popular mythologies about the sailor’s erotic appeal and his voracious sexual appetite that were circulating within contemporary French novels, the illustrated press, popular films and songs. As the appropriation of the naval uniform became visible in photographs documenting its growing fashionability in gay clubs, fancy dress balls and parties in Paris and London, sailor wear registered as queerly resonant to its wearers and admirers, leading to the French sailor becoming a recognizable and much-admired promiscuous gay icon.

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.

This article is an edited transcript of a conversation between Reina Lewis and film maker Campbell X recorded in London in 2015. The interview focuses on the racial, gender, and sexual politics of filmic representation and film production. A multi-award winning QTIPOC (queer trans intersex person of colour) filmmaker, based in London, Campbell’s work has been instrumental in the development of queer British cinema. Centring on Campbell’s 2012 feature film Stud Life, the article provides an historicised account of the development of Campbell’s film practice, and examines the role of dress in the staging of LBGT characters and lives on screen. Providing insights into the process of costume design, casting, and film direction, Lewis and Campbell discuss the central role of dress, the body, and fashion in the visualisation of LGBT lives.

After an article appeared in The Guardian newspaper in 2014, the variety of labels that had been ascribed to one of John Deakin’s photographs became apparent and prompted the question, ‘or is it Bacon in drag?’ from a contributor to the newspaper’s comments stream. This conversation outlines the steps undertaken by Paul Rousseau, the archivist at The John Deakin Archive, to investigate whether the sitter in this photograph could indeed be the artist Francis Bacon in drag. Applying 3D modelling techniques with facial recognition software and employing forensic experts, Rousseau posits hypotheses as to why this sitter could be Francis Bacon. Comparing the sitters in a set of archive images titled ‘transvestites’ to other images from private collections and to a set of found images of Bacon posing for the camera in Y-fronts, this investigation prompts speculation about the ‘evidence’ for and against the photograph in question being of Bacon.

A constant theme in the history of gay men’s dress has been the hyperbolic performance and radical confusion of masculine and feminine gender codes. This research seeks to understand how gender conventions influence the stylistic motivations and dress practices of contemporary gay men. Guided by the theory of gender performativity, this article presents the sartorial biographies of three urban-residing young gay men in Toronto, Canada, who each come from different ethnic backgrounds. Eschewing gender binaries, these men combine unique variations of conventionally masculine and feminine clothing to formulate distinctive looks. Influenced by their sexuality and intersectional identities, these men blend gendered dress codes to express their individuality as well as stimulate meaningful dialogue about gender. The experiences of the men in this study can be seen as representating the influence of neoliberal political ideology and the current postpostmodern cultural climate.

Within the United States general attitudes towards gays and lesbians (GL) are rapidly undergoing change. Several researchers have previously documented that heterosexual consumers respond negatively to advertisements featuring same-sex couples. At this critical juncture, it is important to reexamine consumer response to fashion advertisements featuring GL images. Using a small qualitative study (n = 10) and an experiment (n = 202) our research purpose was to determine whether consumer attitude towards advertisements, brand attitude, brand distinctiveness and/or brand attractiveness varied based on the level of inclusiveness of GL images (i.e. GL-inclusive vs. non-inclusive). Results from the qualitative project demonstrated most participants responded positively to the advertisements featuring GL images although two participants were worried about unidentified ‘negative’ influences on the sexual orientation of heterosexual viewers. The inclusiveness level of GL images did not negatively influence attitude towards the advertisements or brand attitude. Rather, GL-inclusive advertising resulted in higher ratings of brand distinctiveness and attractiveness as compared to the non-inclusive advertising. Implications and limitations of this study as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.