Queer women have always existed, but last summer the influencers and cultural commentators declared we were living through a moment; one that needed a name. Thus the ‘lesbian renaissance’ was born. Suddenly, they were everywhere – filling the Coachella stages, the red carpets, the streets. The increased visibility prompted questions from the representation-hungry masses: where are the lesbians going? Who are they dating? And, importantly, what are they wearing?
Sapphic fashion is perhaps more ubiquitous, and recognisable, than ever. But while the clues are easy to spot for those in the know – the carabiner, the chain, the tank top – most are tied to gender-nonconformity, associated with masc- and butch-presenting people. Femme fashion, on the other hand, is hard to spot and harder to master.
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‘Lesbian-signalling aesthetics have been picked up by the mainstream,’ says Shuang Bright, a style-focused content creator, in a viral video. Overtly feminine women are generally assumed to be straight, and Bright notes that many queer-coded accessories have been co-opted by the fashion crowd, so ‘it’s been harder to discern who really swings that way’.
She describes her own style as a blend of hard and soft elements. ‘There's a romanticism to how I dress. I like to combine feminine silhouettes and materials, like a billowy skirt, with a more structured piece, like a collared shirt.’ For inspiration, she gravitates towards the brands Comme des Garçons, Simone Rocha and Ann Demeulemeester, and looks worn by FKA Twigs and Faye Wong. ‘That 1990s Hong Kong star style is a bit more minimalist, but still very chic.’
On TikTok, Bright started a ‘get ready with me’ series aimed at other femme lesbians who are ‘struggling to communicate that they’re queer’. It’s no surprise that the femmes came flocking; the videos have amassed thousands of views.
Dressing for women, she says, comes down to a perspective shift more than an outfit formula. ‘Once I de-centred men, I wasn’t thinking about how they're going to perceive me. I surrounded myself with queer people and queer spaces.’ That said, when she wants to convey her identity through clothing, Bright incorporates hardware into her outfits, throwing on chunky boots and a black harness adorned with pearls.
Likewise, Mac Rose, a fashion stylist for LGBTQ+ people, is an advocate for personal style over a uniform. With clients, she attempts to deprioritise bodies and focus on the person’s interests and background.
‘One client was interested in interior design and architecture. We found this photo of a stool, which reminded her of an A-line skirt, and we built an outfit based on that,’ they explain. ‘When you start to find influences that are completely devoid of bodies – whether that's male, female, queer, straight, thin, curvy, whatever – it broadens our lens and gets us out of the vacuum of associating every outfit with a body type.’
Personal style is, naturally, personal, and so establishing your own means discovering what you’re into. Rose uses consultations to discuss family dynamics, insecurities, astrology and, crucially, cultural references. She refers to Chloe Sherman, a photographer who captured the queer scene in 1990s San Francisco. Bright, too, ‘hates the idea of telling people what to do’; she says taste is developed through experimentation, and consuming queer media.
To that purpose, those seeking muses might turn to the Instagram page @everylesbianandtheirfashion, where film stills of Marlene Dietrich sit alongside paparazzi snaps of Doechii. ‘No longer dressing for the male gaze is incredibly liberating and inspiring,’ its founder Marloes Leeuw says. ‘Femme fashion can be traditionally feminine, but it can also lean more androgynous.’
Leeuw references the clip of Rachel Weisz telling an interviewer she likes ‘looking at beautiful girls’ as a summing up of what it means to dress for women. ‘It’s about looking at other women not just for inspiration, but simply because you love women.’
One such woman is Kristen Stewart, who appears regularly on Leeuw’s grid, and whose Rolling Stone cover featured her in ‘a jockstrap, basketball shorts and a leather vest that showed off her biceps’. Leeuw also mentions Sabrina Carpenter and Janelle Monáe’s Met Gala after-party outfits as recent favourites, and Sarah Paulson, ‘always’, in oversized suits.
But for Leeuw, fashion is much more than stars and red-carpet glam. ‘It’s about freedom of expression,’ she says, which is under attack right now. ‘As a community and as allies, we have to do everything we can to support and protect one another, and to fight for our rights to exist and thrive.’
And while this is relevant to everyone who wears clothes and breathes, it’s critical, right now, for minorities. ‘The day Donald Trump was elected president was the day I had the most gender-affirming styling consultations of my entire career,’ Rose says.
In the US, the Trump administration has targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, and trans rights; here in the UK, the Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of a woman is someone born ‘biologically female’. In short, LGBTQ+ rights are under threat, something that Rose, Leeuw and Bright are all keenly aware of.
‘There’s this conservative wave that's sweeping, not only America, but the world,’ Bright says. ‘And that includes trad wives and conservative styles of dress. Personal style becomes even more important, because your identity and how you dress get mixed up together.’
One of the (many) advantages of being a lesbian is there’s no obvious way to express that identity through fashion. When working with femme clients, Rose often shows them pictures of boys and men to help break down barriers. ‘In the 1970s, booty shorts were the pinnacle of masculinity for straight men. When old men are commenting on Facebook, like, “what happened to the real men?” I’m like, girl, they’re in booty shorts and knee-high socks in the back.’
‘Style is fluid,’ they add. ‘It's important to make sure we don't keep pushing this bias that queer people are new.’
When historian Eleanor Medhurst created her blog, Dressing Dykes, during the pandemic, she couldn't have predicted its rapturous reception, and eventual transformation into a book. In Unsuitable, Medhurst weaves a centuries-spanning tale of lesbian fashion, with a chapter covering femmes.
‘I think that learning about LGBTQ+ history can be an enormous help to people looking for ways to express themselves,’ Medhurst says. ‘We've always been here, and for femmes, who often feel invisible, this can be empowering. There's an endless well of creativity within the queer community, and femme lesbians are regularly at the forefront of that.’
Bright’s ‘fit checks, Leeuw’s page, Mac’s consultations and Medhurst’s blog are just fragments of a recent boom in digital content that draws attention to femme lesbians. The references are wide: one fan community celebrates the tomboyish glam of Reneé Rapp, while another exalts the sleek, gun-toting looks of Caitlyn Kiramman, a beloved character from the Netflix series Arcane.
As Medhurst attests: ‘There's no one way to be, or to dress like, a femme lesbian’.
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