Unsuitable by Eleanor Medhurst

Publishes 1 June 
 
From Sappho and Suffragettes to t-shirts and TikTok, a fascinating journey through the history and politics of lesbian clothing.
 
The way we dress can show or hide who we are; make us fit in, make us stand out, or make our own community. Yet ‘lesbian fashion’ has been strangely overlooked. What secrets can it reveal about the lives and status of queer women through the ages?
 
The lesbian past is slippery: often deliberately hidden, edited or left unrecorded. Unsuitablerestores to history the dazzlingly varied clothes worn by women who love women, from top hats to violet tiaras. This story spans centuries and countries, from ‘Gentleman Jack’ in nineteenth-century Yorkshire and Queen Christina of seventeenth-century Sweden, to Paris modernism, genderqueer Berlin, butch/femme bar culture and gay rights activists—via drag kings, Vogue editors and the Harlem Renaissance.
 
This book is a kaleidoscope of the margins and the mainstream, celebrating trans lesbian style, Black lesbian style, and gender nonconformity. You don’t have to be queer or fashionable to be enthralled by this hidden history. Unsuitable lights it up for the world to see, in all its finery.
 
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‘While Unsuitable painstakingly traces the style aspect, it also examines the reasons lesbian fashion has been lost to history. While homophobia against women is nothing new, Medhurst underscores how it even permeates the fashion world.’ - Vogue
 
‘A charming, enlightening and inspiring history of a too-often overlooked identity.’ - Paul Baker, award-winning author of Camp!; Outrageous! and Fabulosa!
 
‘A wonderful, celebratory and joyously queer insight into lesbian fashion—I loved it.’ - Tasha Suri, award-winning author of the Burning Kingdoms trilogy.