Dressing Dykes

Lesbian Fashion History

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About Me

I’m Eleanor Medhurst, a dress historian and a dyke. I’m from Brighton, living in Birmingham with my wife. She/her.

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I’m back to writing about lesbian t-shirts again (because of course I am) so I wanted to share this Lesbian Avengers t-shirt from the @womenslibrary collection. I took this photo on my first visit to the GWL lesbian archive in 2019, before writing my master’s dissertation. At the time, I referred to the Lesbian Avengers’ imagery - the bomb, encircled by the words “THE LESBIAN AVENGERS” - as a “visual shout”. For Valentine’s Day, here’s some Original Lesbian Love: ‘Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene’ by Simeon Solomon, 1864. Just a small post about Edith (‘Edy’) Craig, mostly because I love this portrait of her with a cat. Recently, I’ve been writing about Stormé DeLarverie, and I want to take a second to share her here. Stormé is remembered primarily as a male impersonator and the alleged “Stonewall lesbian”. She’s said to have prompted the crowd to fight back against the police at Stonewall in 1969, but she once said herself that “it was never anybody’s business”, another time saying that it WAS her who did it, and another saying that she knew who the real “Stonewall lesbian” was, but she wouldn’t tell. I hope you’re all having a fabulous festive period! 🎄 Just popping in to share some more lesbian male impersonation history with you, this time in the form of Ella Shields and her lesbian fans. Two American male impersonators, Blanche Selwyn and Annie Hindle, who might have legally married each other in 1870! A “fashionable fem” and a “young stud” in 1950s Buffalo, New York, from Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis’ ‘Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community’ ([1993] 2014). Apologies for not being super active on Dressing Dykes recently - I’m working on some exciting things, I promise! In the meantime, here’s some ladies looking very lesbian, both in manner and in dress. High collars are SO gay. Sharing an old TikTok today because I’ve been listening to King by Florence and the Machine and thinking a lot about Queen Christina…

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