Queer Style ( Revised and Updated Edition)

First published in 2013, Queer Style was ahead of its time. It was the first book to address the cultural, political, and material histories of clothes as signs and markers of gender and sexual identity, and remains key reading for scholars and students across fashion studies and the humanities more broadly. Now, 10 years later, the authors have revisited their classic work and updated it to examine the function of subcultural dress within queer communities and the mannerisms and messages that are used as signifiers of identity. Includes a chapter on Trans* and Fluid style.

Queer Style offers an insight into queer fashionability by addressing the role that clothing has played in historical and contemporary lifestyles. From a fashion studies perspective, it examines the function of subcultural dress within queer communities and the mannerisms and messages that are used as signifiers of identity. Diverse dress is examined, including effeminate 'pansy,' masculine macho 'clone,' the 'lipstick' and 'butch' lesbian styles and the extreme styles of drag kings and drag queens.

Divided into three main sections on history, subcultural identity and subcultural style, Queer Style will be of particular interest to students of dress and fashion as well as those coming to subculture from sociology and cultural studies.

 

 

“If clothes make the man (and the woman), how much more do they make the queer man or woman. This insightful book looks at the way fashion has coded same-sex desire, from eighteenth-century macaronis and gentlemen fops to modern leathermen and muscle queens, from mannish Sapphic women to lipstick lesbians. As those with homoerotic orientations constructed their sexualities and identities, the authors reveal, so they dressed themselves for the parts they played.” – Robert Aldrich, Professor of European History, University of Sydney.

 

Queer Style has established itself as the ultimate reader for understanding the LGBTQIA community: there is no better text! While not forgetting historical context, it allows us to understand how fashion has played a key role for all of us - regardless of ethnicity, race and age. ― Joseph H. Hancock, II, Drexel University, USA

Like queer style itself, Geczy and Karaminas' analysis is world-shaping, nuanced and alive. Their revised edition shows us that queer style is as political as ever, moving from a countercultural force to eradicating mainstream white cis-hetero dominance and the binaries that uphold it. Required reading for every student, educator and scholar who is part of the movement to orient fashion studies in social justice. ― Ben Barry, Parsons School of Design, New York, USA

Moving from Brummell and Biggie to Winckelmann and Warhol, Queer Style is equal parts historical analysis and manifesto for the politics that have underpinned queer dressing since the 18th century. This revised volume is as important a resource for researchers and students today as when it was first published in 2013. ― Nigel Lezama, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada