Lesbian Chic Lives Forever, Apparently

30 years ago, lesbian chic leapt into the world. As unexpected as it was provocative, lesbian chic cemented lesbianism firmly into the zeitgeist of the early-to-mid-’90s  – if only in its ‘chicest’ guise. Lesbian fashionability has its boundaries, and the kinds of lesbians that could be described as ‘lesbian chic’ were very different from most (if not all) of the lesbians whose style choices I’ve been celebrating for years here on Dressing Dykes. In many ways lesbian chic was never real, a media-fueled smokescreen used to commodify a population whose existence had always been appalling. Yet, in other ways, its legacy lives on. It’s been three decades since 1993, and while lesbian chic has never again been quite so shiny or new, it’s certainly had a few makeovers. From Vanity Fair to The L Word to “sexy” new trends, lesbian chic lives forever (apparently).

It’s May 1993 and two words are splashed across the cover of New York magazine’s latest issue – you guessed it: ‘LESBIAN CHIC’. The cover story, complete with the subtitle “The Bold, Brave New World of Gay Women” (as if lesbians had only just sprung into life) was illustrated with a suave portrait of musician k.d. lang, all short dark hair, piercing eyes, and menswear. All at once, lesbian chic had its first face. Its perseverance, however, cannot be only credited to New York; in fact, it was a triad of American magazines, published in quick succession, responsible for making lesbians so certifiably chic. 

The second publication in this now forever-linked yet otherwise random group was an issue of Newsweek published on 21 June. Less glamorous than New York, the cover of Newsweek displayed an affectionate but not overtly romantic portrait of a lesbian couple. Both partners were thin, white and respectable, and one ever so slightly more masculine than the other. They were, as described by Ann M. Ciasullo in her 2001 article about lesbian representation in the ‘90s, “all-American girls”.¹ Even with this clean-cut, approachable image of a lesbian relationship, the Newsweek cover questions its morality, asking its (presumed heterosexual) audience: “What Are The Limits of Tolerance?”

The final magazine cover in this triad and perhaps lesbian chic’s most infamous representation is the August 1993 issue of Vanity Fair, once again featuring k.d. lang. The Vanity Fair cover shoot blurs “chic” into “sex”. lang, dressed again in tailored menswear, reclines in a barber’s chair while being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford, who poses in a tight, black bodysuit with her head back and her eyes closed. The photograph – the whole shoot – is now iconic within lesbian history and visual culture, the dynamic between lang and Crawford and their contrasting black-and-white outfits representing a kind of camp queer sexuality that is at once enticing and fun. At the time, it was more likely to be criticised within lesbian communities, even if the accompanying article was altogether positive; writer Leslie Bennetts describes lang’s “gender bending” as “a deeply subversive presence”, exploring her talent, her personal struggles, and her “piercing blue-gray eyes”.² Even so, as Trish Bendix pointed out earlier this year in her retrospective of lesbian chic and Café Tabrac, “while [lang’s] Vanity Fair issue remains one of the most iconic covers ever, it wasn’t long before butches were erased from the lesbian chic narrative in favor of something more desirable by men.” Ciasullo, too, noted in 2001 that lang was as masculine as ‘chic’ could get – “the exception to the rule”.³ While k.d. lang’s image may have set lesbian chic into motion, the trend needed more conventional images to keep it going. 

Lesbian chic had to sell, after all, or what was the point?

Lesbian chic was always a commodity. The phrase’s first use was in chapter 3 of Lillian Faderman’s landmark lesbian history Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991), titled ‘Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s’ – covering, admittedly, a very chic period for lesbians.⁴ Despite this, it was glossy magazines that turned lesbian chic into a ‘90s sensation. It was magazines who dressed it up and stuck a price tag on its lapel. By and large, lesbians were not happy about it. “New York magazine’s ‘Lesbian Chic’,” bemoaned Kara Swisher in an article for the Washington Post, “seems to put lesbians on the same what’s-in level as the latest tapas bar or place to have your skin peeled.”⁵ She continues: “the pop-culture attention to lesbians smacks of zoo-going – an outing to view the latest kind of exotic animal on display.”⁶ A year later, in July 1994, Linda Grant pointed out the sartorial incongruities of lesbian chic in the British newspaper The Independent, writing: 

Lesbians – but they’ll need a lot of airbrushing first. Because up to now haven’t we been under the impression that they are hairy-legged, with shaved heads, clad in dungarees?

Not as reinterpreted by the media. 1994 has been the summer of lipstick lesbians […]. In other words, a six-stone weakling with no mouth or attitude, who won’t give any trouble when homophobia is back in fashion.

Then, in 1995, a book chapter by Marguerite Moritz asks the question: ‘Lesbian Chic: Our Fifteen Minutes of Celebrity?’ Moritz examines the problem at the core of lesbian chic’s being, the reason why so many lesbians in the ‘90s felt the opposite of represented by its charm. She explains that “the chic lesbian shown in the slick mass market magazine is a creation that succeeds as a commodity but fails utterly as an explanation of who lesbians in all their diversity are and what they experience in this culture.”⁷ Lesbian reality, after all, is often not chic. For countless lesbians around the world and throughout history life can be incredibly difficult, if not because of their sexuality in a heterosexist and homophobic world then because of other, intersecting experiences – racism, ableism or poverty, to name only a few very large and complex oppressions. Of course, a lesbian can face hardship and discrimination and still be stylish and self-actualised, but ‘chic’ feels flat, unable to contain the magnitudes of lesbian experience, or even just our style. We’re more than chic; we’re magnificent. 

From the May 1993 edition of New York magazine, lesbian chic’s official debut, an oft-quoted passage was born. The writer of the issue’s cover story, Jeanie Kasindorf, ended up creating the unofficial aesthetic rulebook of lesbian chic when describing the patrons of the New York City lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson. Paying particular attention to particular patrons, she wrote:

Outside the front stands the bouncer, a short young woman with a shaved head and a broad, square body. She’s covered in loose black cotton pants, and looks like an out-of-shape kung fu instructor… [Inside] sits a young woman straight from a Brooks Brothers catalogue wearing a conservative plaid jacket and matching knee-length pleated skirt, a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and a strand of pearls. She chats with her lover while they sip white wine and rub each other’s backs. Across from them, at the bar, sits a group of young women in jeans and black leather, all with cropped hair… The Brooks Brothers woman and her lover leave, and are replaced by two 26-year-old women with the same scrubbed, girl-next-door good looks. The two are celebrating their engagement and show off matching diamond rings… In the other alcove is a sexy young tawny-skinned woman in her early twenties. She has thick, dark, curly hair flowing into her eyes and down her back; she wears a skintight top over tight jeans. She is talking to her pretty blond lover, also in tight jeans, with a black leather jacket… These are the faces of a new generation of women – women who have transformed the lesbian image.⁸

Kasindorf’s article is not available online, so I pulled this quote from Ciasullo’s 2001 article (referenced earlier). Ciasullo analyses the passage, coming to the conclusion that “lesbians here fall into one of two main categories: incredibly (and conventionally) attractive, and thus described quite thoroughly (and voyeuristically), or not conventionally attractive, and thus briefly mentioned or dismissed.”⁹ Meanwhile, Jodi R. Schorb and Tania N. Hammidi, in an article on lesbian chic and the mullet, also linger on Kasindorf’s description of Henrietta Hudson. They note the bouncer with the shaved head, compared to an “out-of-shape kung fu instructor”, so allegedly un-chic and marked as such by her place outside the bar itself. “This “new world” of lesbian style”, say Schorb and Hammidi, “is made possible by its exiles.”¹⁰ Of course, the exiles of lesbian chic and its “bold, brave new world” were never exiles of lesbian style, community, or spaces. In fact, one of the bouncers employed at Henrietta Hudson in the early ‘90s was Stormé Delarverie, a now-legendary figure in lesbian history who was in many ways the antithesis of lesbian chic. While not the bouncer dismissed in Kasindorf’s piece (described as a “short young woman”), she wasn’t a million miles away – and her presence was vital. In the words of Stormé herself: “I see a lot of things in my position as a bouncer, but please don’t call me that. I consider myself a well-paid babysitter of my people, all the boys and girls.”¹¹ 

Lesbian chic was a moment (and then a handful of other moments), and while it was very much not inclusive, the style that it represented did exist. On one extreme was the masculinity – though often referred to in less definite terms, with descriptions like “androgyny” or “gender-bending” – showcased by k.d. lang and flashed across the covers of New York and Vanity Fair. Yet on the other, and vastly more populated, was the sleek, business-feminine version of lesbian chic, personified by “The Brooks Brothers woman”, the “sexy young tawny-skinned woman in her early twenties” and her “pretty blond lover”. Indeed, it’s true that lesbian chic showed lesbians as they had never been celebrated before. Linda Grant was right that the only lesbian style that had previously lived in the public consciousness was that made up of hairy legs, shaved heads and dungarees. Though I might personally be an admirer of this activist-dyke style, it remains only one option among many lesbian fashion possibilities. Femininity rarely gets a day in the sun within the history of lesbian fashion; this is not because swathes of lesbians haven’t dressed in feminine fashionable attire, but because their lesbianism is more difficult to spot in the historical record if they do so. Without a neon sign above their head screaming LESBIAN, feminine lesbians and their clothing choices slip under the radar of lesbian history. In many ways, lesbian chic is that sign. 

Yet, lesbian chic remains a commodified version of lesbianism. No matter who it represents, lesbian chic never existed for lesbians, but for those to whom lesbianism was exotic and novel. It could never be too much – above all, it had to be appealing. In all its reinventions, lesbian chic was not about lesbian fashionability, but the marketability of whichever strand of lesbian style happened to be reflected in the mainstream that week. 

The next notable outing of ‘lesbian chic’ – except, perhaps, for Ellen DeGeneres’ ‘Yep, I’m Gay’ Time cover from April 1997 – was in 2004. This year marked the beginning of The L Word. The infamous lesbian TV show has been linked to lesbian chic since it first aired, with the LGBTQ-focused American magazine The Advocate celebrating The L Word’s launch with a piece titled ‘Lesbian chic, part deux’. The author, Kate Nielson, wrote that “We’ve arrived. The postmodern lesbian: not totally butch and not totally lipstick chic but definitely demographically desirable”.¹² Once again, lesbian chic was synonymous with marketability and the desirability of lesbians to people other than women-loving-women. 

Nonetheless, The L Word was a step forward for lesbian chic. Its image of lesbianism, and particularly lesbian style and aesthetics, may have been polished to a shine just sparkly enough to draw in a heterosexual audience, but it was loved by many a lesbian, too. Claire Carter, in her 2018 reflection of lesbian chic and The L Word, asserts that the show’s chic appeal made space for other, less chic representations of lesbian life and love:

While The L Word featured a caricature of the lesbian that is heteronormatively appealing – femme, white and cosmopolitan, this lesbian chic ideal makes possible subversive moments that […] have had a lasting impact on queer popular culture and media, as well as on contemporary gender norms, queer community and forms of representation.¹³

The L Word kept lesbian chic on television screens until its final episode in 2009. By 2012, however, the notion of lesbian chic was almost forgotten, ready to start debate anew. The interpretation of lesbian style popular by this point was very different; fashion had moved on, and so had the kinds of lesbians whose looks were apparently in vogue. 

Pages archived from lesbian websites and writers in the Summer of 2012 illustrate an uproar. Its cause, unfortunately, is not a page that survived: the lesbian articles cite a piece from Style.com, which has since been reborn as the online shopping site FARFETCH. An anonymous post on HuffPost (titled ‘Style.com Ponders ‘Lesbian Chic’ As Fashion’s Hot New Trend’) declares that “Last we checked, being gay wasn’t a “trend”. But Style.com has decided to throw logic to the wind, naming “lesbian chic” as one of its hot topics for fall.”¹⁴ The relevant section of Style.com’s style forecast was helpfully shared as a screenshot by the HuffPost writer, which I’ve included below. “IS LESBIAN CHIC HERE TO STAY?” it ponders, before declaring, “Lesbians! They’re everywhere.” The approach is understandably frustrating, but at this point was nothing new – especially not the contentious term ‘lesbian chic’ itself.

It wasn’t only the HuffPost article that responded to Style.com’s ‘lesbian chic’ revival. Connie Wang mused in a piece for Refinery29 that “it seems rather reductive to take an inherent personal characteristic and turn it into a social trend (not to mention an aesthetic – yikes)”, while an article by Allie Connell on the Massachusetts Daily Collegian argued that “by making lesbianism a fashion statement of wearing Doc Martens and having a pixie cut, it is reducing the choice of sexuality to a passing fad.”¹⁵ These writers were right, of course. Lesbianism is and always has been more than the ways that it may be recognised through aesthetics, more than the ways that, through twists of fashion fate, it becomes momentarily ‘chic’… but lesbian chic-ness is, by now, tradition. Lesbians, whether with Eton Crops and monocles, sleek ‘90s suits or the punky androgyny of the early 2010s, have been style leaders in one way or another for a very long time.¹⁶ Our alleged influence was acknowledged anew as recently as last year, in fact. Perhaps you remember? 

“‘Dressing like a lesbian’ is sexy, ‘powerful’ new trend, fashion expert says” declared a headline on the New York Post in March 2022, complete with photos of mostly-straight celebrities in suits.¹⁷ Cue a thousand scathing responses from lesbians across every social media platform imaginable. I was one of them – I posted on Instagram about how lesbian fashion has always been ‘sexy’ and ‘powerful’, thanks. Anita Dolce Vita, writing a piece about the fiasco for her website DapperQ, explained the problems behind trends being described as ‘lesbian’ or ‘queer’ in depth, saying that queer fashion “is so expansive that I cannot put into words the immense diversity, multiplicity, and potential it holds. It is not simply skinny cis women, queer or not, wearing suits.”¹⁸ 

Lesbian fashion is so much more than whatever part of it is deemed chic, ‘sexy’ or ‘powerful’ for five seconds on any given slow news day. Lesbian fashion can truly mean anything. This is how lesbian chic lives forever: because it can be reinvented time and time again, because there’s so much to be inspired by, so many tiny parts of the lesbian fashion landscape that can be rebranded from ‘ugly’ to ‘chic’. Still, I prefer the parts that remain un-chic – the weird or experimental lesbians, whose likenesses might one day grace the cover of glossy magazines but whose uglier, weirder and more experimental successors are ready and waiting to take their place. If ‘lesbian chic’ lives forever, the un-chic are eternal, too.

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Endnotes

1. Ann M. Ciasullo, ‘Making her (in)visible: Cultural representations of lesbianism and the lesbian body in the 1990s’, Feminist Studies 27.3 (2001): 585. ↩︎
2. Trish Bendix, ‘The Year Lesbians Were Chic’, Paper, 13 March 2023, papermag.com. ↩︎
3. Ciasullo, ‘Making her (in)visible’, 588. ↩︎
4. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, (New York: Penguin [1991] 1992) 62. ↩︎
5. Kara Swisher, ‘We Love Lesbians! Or Do We? ‘Hot’ Subculture – or Just New Hurtful Stereotypes?’ The Washington Post, 18 July 1993. washingtonpost.com. ↩︎
6. Linda Grant, ‘Real Life: Women in love: more than just a fashion statement: Gay Chic is in vogue, but lipstick lesbians aren’t the full story, writes Linda Grant’, The Independent, 2 July 1994. independent.co.uk. ↩︎
7. Marguerite Moritz, ‘Lesbian Chic: Our Fifteen Minutes of Celebrity?’ in Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global Diversities, Angharad N. Valdivia, ed., (California, London & New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995) 129. ↩︎
8. Jeanie Kasindorf, ‘Lesbian Chic: The Bold, Brave New World of Gay Women’, New York, 10 May 1993, 33. Qted in Ciasullo, ‘Making her (in)visible’, 592–3. ↩︎
9. Ciasullo, ‘Making her (in)visible’, 593. ↩︎
10. Jodi R. Schorb and Tania N. Hammidi, ‘Sho-Lo Showdown: The Do’s and Don’ts of Lesbian Chic’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 19.2 (2000), 260. ↩︎
11. Stormé Delarverie, qted in Robert West, ‘Stormé DeLarverie: In a Storm of Indifference, She’s Still a Jewel’, 26 March 2013, HuffPost. huffpost.com. ↩︎
12. Kate Nielsen, ‘Lesbian chic, part deux’, 17 Feb 2004, The Advocate, 9. ↩︎
13. Claire Carter, ‘Lesbian chic, femme-ininity and feminist dialogue: Reflecting on The L Word,’ Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 3.1 (2018): 68. ↩︎
14. Anonymous, ‘Style.com Ponders ‘Lesbian Chic’ As Fashion’s Hot New Trend (PHOTO, POLL)’, HuffPost, 30 Aug. 2012, huffpost.com. ↩︎
15. Connie Wang, ‘Is “Lesbian” A Fashion Trend? Style.com Says Yes’, 30 Aug. 2012, Refinery29. refinery29.com; Allie Connell, ‘’Lesbian Chic’ reduces sexual identity to fashion trend’, Massachusetts Daily Collegian, 7 Nov. 2012. dailycollegian.com.  ↩︎
16. Laura Doan, ‘Passing fashions: Reading female masculinities in the 1920s’, Feminist Studies 24.3 (1998). ↩︎
17. New York Post, ‘’Dressing like a lesbian’ is sexy, ‘powerful’ new trend, fashion expert says’, New York Post, 15 Mar. 2022. Nypost.com. ↩︎
18. Anita Dolce Vita, ‘New York Post Calls Lesbian Fashion “New” Trend, Misses Point’, DapperQ, 10 April 2022. Dapperq.com.  ↩︎