It’s been a while since I posted on Dressing Dykes, but I’ve definitely not stopped talking about lesbian fashion history. My last post was announcing my book, Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion – which was published by Hurst this June. Though I have plans for some more posts in the near future (hopefully!), I wanted to check in and talk to you about Unsuitable, and about Lesbian Fashion Summer, also known as the Unsuitable Book Tour.
So: Unsuitable officially came out on 1st June 2024, just in time for Pride Month. Before and during the month, the book had a bunch of really amazing press – lesbian fashion as a concept was really resonating with people (and, let’s face it, June is the time of year when queer subjects tend to get more attention than usual in the mainstream). The book was featured on Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian and Autostraddle among others, and I was asked to write a quick rundown of lesbian fashion history for the Financial Times. What really left an impression for me, though, was meeting people who cared about the topic – sometimes people who had been reading this blog and following on social media for years. It means a lot to know that this is a topic that other people care about, too; it’s why I wrote the book in the first place.
The book tour kicked off at the British Library. This was an incredible event, chaired by the wonderful Roxy Bourdillon (editor of DIVA magazine), and I’ll admit that after signing the final book of the night I did shed a few tears. From here, Unsuitable went all over the UK – from a launch party at Gay’s the Word (!) to events in Birmingham, Leeds, Brighton, Oxford, Nottingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester. This is a huge thank you to everyone who came along, and to everyone who asked questions and made each discussion different. We covered so much lesbian fashion history!
Things are still happening with Unsuitable. On 30th November I’ll be talking about the book at Charleston House in Sussex. And while official Lesbian Fashion Summer has come to a close, lesbian fashion history is still unfolding – in other words, I’m still typing away at my laptop and burying my head in books. I want to get a couple of new blog posts up in the coming months, so let me know if there are any particular topics you’d like to see covered. I’m also starting to work on a new project, which for now I’ll just call ‘Book 2’.
That’s my update, really! While I’m writing, I’ll take a moment to point you to my other work: lecturing and consultancy about lesbian fashion history. If you teach a course or organise events for a university or institution (etc.), you can hire me to give a guest lecture or talk about lesbian fashion history, or even sapphic hair history. If you’re working on a project that needs some lesbian fashion input, you’re also able to book a meeting with me to chat about it. I’ve just set up a new page with info, so just click here to find out more.
That’s really all for now. As always, thank you for reading this post on Dressing Dykes ♡
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