Dungarees, monocles, vegan boots and carabiners: lesbian fashion historian Ellie Medhurst (Brighton University) is intimately familiar with all of these staples of sartorial Sapphism. In this minisode, Ellie, aka @dressigndykes, will teach you how you too can look like cool lesbian. Ellie mixes tasty tidbits from queer Japanese fashion history with DIY political t-shirts in an audio(visual) melange of goodness and if you are not following @dressingdykes on Instagram and @elliemedhurst on Twitter and Tiktok, what are you doing with your lesbian life?



Texts and people mentioned:

www.dressingdykes.com

Édouard Bourdet’s The Captive (La Prisonnière, 1926)

Seitō

https://dressingdykes.com/2021/07/09/feminism-and-the-fashioned-lesbian-in-1910s-japan/

Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree



Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What are some ‘secret codes’ of lesbian fashion?

2. What can we learn about lesbian life by studying fashion and the history of fashion?

3. Ellie talks about gendered fashion in 1910s Japan. Which gendered twist does she highlight here?

4. How might queer fashion be relevant to queer culture beyond a desire to recognise each other?

5. Do you have a favourite queer fashion item?