GLR November-December 2024

She’s Got the Look

U NSUITABLE is a lavishly il lustrated coffeetable book that makes up in æsthetic appeal for what it lacks in academic rigor. It covers a range of eras and cultures in which women-loving-women have adopted distinctive styles of dress, jump ing from profiles of famous lesbians in his tory (Sappho, Queen Christina of Sweden, Anne Lister of England) to discus sions of cosmopolitan cities, forms of entertainment, and political ac tivism. Nevertheless, the book is well-researched, and this eclectic approach is undoubtedly part of its charm. Author Eleanor Medhurst jus tifies an interest in the historical importance of clothing in her in troduction: “Fashion is what [peo ple’s] clothes become when they are situated within a culture— when they mean something, whether trendiness or the lack of it, age, heritage, class, status, gender or sexuality. … For lesbians, whose very existence subverts the categories of gender and sexuality, fashion can be a conscious state ment, a deliberate veil or an every day expression of a reality that is not the social norm.” The photographs of women wearing monocles, riding habits, tuxedos with top hats, or ensembles that look like sailors’ uniforms show that lesbian stylishness is not limited to “femmes,” and that les bians or “lesbian-adjacent” women (who prefer the company of women) have always been style lead ers, and not only in counter-cultural communities. In a section titled “The Lesbian 1920s,” Medhurst describes the considerable influence of a lesbian couple, Dorothy Todd and Madge Garland, not only on British fashion but on the arts in general during their reign as chief editor and fashion edi tor of the British version of Vogue magazine from 1922 to 1926. The significance of lesbianism, broadly speak ing, as an aspect of the “modernism” of the 1920s is deftly explained. It is not a coincidence that women gained political agency when they were Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan. 38

allowed to vote in the U.K. in 1918, and in the U.S. and Canada in 1920. As women who have often gone without male economic support or protection, lesbians have traditionally needed—and benefited from—a degree of power and independ ence not available to women in traditional heterosexual relationships. Medhurst does not dwell on legal re strictions pertaining to men’s and women’s clothing, but does explain why even the most masculine women of the past often improvised a combination of masculine and feminine clothing for everyday wear. As stage performers, 19th century women could legally dress as “male impersonators” and earn rave reviews in the press. Photos of the American vaudevillian Ella Wesner in the 1870s, the British music hall performer Vesta Tilley in the 1890s, and the iconic African American singer Gladys Bentley in a white top hat and tails (circa 1940) are included. The popularity of such performers clearly shows a general interest in “cross-dressing” in times when trousers on women were not accepted in most public venues. At the end of the Victorian Age, Vesta Tilley was the highest-paid female performer on the British stage. In a chapter titled “We Were Al

J EAN R OBERTA

UNSUITABLE A History of Lesbian Fashion

by Eleanor Medhurst Hurst. 344 pages, $35.

Sébastien Bourdon. Christina, Queen of Sweden , 1653.

Women at the Gateways, a London lesbian club, in 1953.

TheG & LR