These looks defined countless trends across the decades
BY BELLA FRANCIS, IMAGE BY CORBIS
Although it is a common perception that queer people dress better, it is one of the few prevailing stigmas we like to believe is true. Throughout history, queer people have consistently stood out for their aesthetic choices, starting trends, and trailblazing in spaces they’ve not always been welcome.
We’ve compiled seven such queer fashion icons. While their fashion choices were cutting-edge, their achievements also stretch further than their clothes.
Writer and costume designer Mercedes De Acosta (1893-1968)
Infamous for her affairs with women, including Greta Garbo, Alla Nazimova, Marlene Dietrich, and Isadora Duncan, De Acosta was a poet, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and costume designer. Born in New York City in 1893, the youngest of eight siblings, she dressed in male clothing for much of her life, including as a child.
Donald Albrecht and Stephen Vider explain in “Gay Gotham”: “While her [writing] never achieved the widespread and lasting acclaim she avidly sought, de Acosta did succeed in consciously fashioning herself into the image of a sexually promiscuous and liberated woman who represented the zeitgeist of her era’s lesbian-chic culture. In doing so, de Acosta created a famously queer persona for herself that remains her most significant artistic achievement.”
Toto Koopman (1908-1991)
Model, Spy, archaeologist, and Arts Patron Toto Koopman was the earliest known woman photographed on the cover of Vogue in September 1933. She was also an open bisexual and spent most of her life with art dealer Erica Brausen (with whom she later opened a London gallery).
Catharina “Toto” Koopman was born on the Island of Java in 1908 to her Indonesian mother and Dutch father. She moved to the Netherlands to study, and by the time she finished, she could speak Italian, German, French, English, and Dutch fluently.
Throughout her modelling career, she became known for her elegant poise and thin eyebrows, working for major fashion houses like Vogue and Coco Chanel.
In 1939, after moving to Italy, she began a relationship with a leader of the anti-Mussolini resistance. She soon became involved in the movement, engineering her society connections and selling her furs and jewellery to help back his anti-fascist endeavours. Shortly thereafter, WWII broke out, and Toto, with her vast list of contacts and connections, along with her multilingual skillset, agreed to become a spy for the Italian Resistance.
Blues singer Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)
An out-and-proud tuxedo-sporting blues singer, Gladys Bentley was one of the stars of the Harlem Renaissance. She performed at clubs where she often improvised lyrics and flirted with women in the audience.
Renowned for her white top hat and tuxedo, Bentley created a signature look that is still remembered by members of the queer community today.
She once told Ebony magazine: “From the time I can remember anything, I never wanted a man to touch me. … Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys’ clothes than in dresses”
Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)
Marlene Dietrich, who started her acting career in 1919, was one of Hollywood’s first queer fashion icons. Openly bisexual, she spent time in the accepting, artistic culture of Berlin in the Weimar Republic.
Dietrich was a fashion icon and broke some major barriers with her androgynous film roles. She would often don menswear along with her other luxe fashion looks, and almost always wore a hat. In an interview with The Observer in 1960, Dietrich said if it were up to her, she’d wear men’s jeans all the time.
Her vast filmography and signature style have inspired countless celebrities in years past, some notable ones being Madonna, Queen, and Sasha Velour.
Stormé DeLarverie (c.1920 – 2014)
According to herself and many eyewitnesses, Stormé DeLarverie was supposedly the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police ignited the Stonewall uprising.
For most of her life, she worked as a drag king, but instead of leaving her male persona on the stage, she often walked around New York in suits and her signature short hair. She claimed this started somewhat of a trend, telling AfterEllen: “I was doing it, and then [other lesbians] started doing it!”
Her look was so recognisable that in 1961 she attracted the attention of legendary photographer Diane Arbus. Arbus’ portrait of her “Miss Storme de Larverie [sic], the lady who appears to be a gentleman,” has appeared in multiple Arbus retrospectives, including a 2016 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Throughout her life, DeLarverie also worked as a bodyguard, a guardian of the gay village, a volunteer street patroller, an MC, and a singer.
April Ashley MBE (1935-2021)
English model April Ashley is renowned for being the first successful trans model and one of the first British people to have undergone gender affirming surgery.
After she began cabaret in Paris in the 1950s, a move to London skyrocketed her modelling career. She worked with the top photographers/artists of the time, landing spreads in magazines such as Vogue and walking the runway for major fashion houses.
This all changed, however, after The Sunday People newspaper outed her as trans in 1961. Overnight everything changed. April’s name was dropped from her recent film credit and her modelling work vanished. April retaliated, serialising her own story through their competitor tabloid The News Of The World, to reclaim this very personal narrative.
Despite the transphobia she faced, Ashley continued to pioneer for trans rights and in 2012 was awarded an MBE for “services to transgender equality”.
Connie Fleming (1960s-today)
Connie Fleming is a Jamaican-born model who grew up in Brooklyn, NYC. She first became known as a “showgirl” in the drag and ballroom scene of New York in the 80s and 90s.
It was in one of these ballrooms that Stephen Meisel, an American fashion photographer, discovered her. Her modelling career soon took off, leading to interest from designers like Thierry Mugler and Vivienne Westwood.
Although she became an international runway veteran, her career wasn’t exclusively in modelling, she also worked in production, makeup, styling and runway coaching.
Fleming still models today, in 2024 she walked runways for Mugler in Paris and Area in New York and starred in a MAC Cosmetics holiday campaign.
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