Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion w/ Eleanor Medhurst & Joelle Taylor

From Sappho and Suffragettes to t-shirts and TikTok, come on a fascinating journey through the history and politics of lesbian clothing, from historian Eleanor Medhurst and T S Eliot and Polari Book Prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor.

The lesbian past is slippery: often deliberately hidden, edited or left unrecorded. Unsuitable  restores 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 – a kaleidoscope of the margins and the mainstream, trans lesbian style, Black lesbian style, and gender nonconformity.

Joelle Taylor’s work explores sexuality and protest through the lens of the butch counterculture of the 1990s. Taylor’s lyrical and intimate poem ‘C+nto’, brought an era and its marginalised people to explosive prominence.

Together, Medhurst and Taylor celebrate the ever-evolving style of the lesbian community, in all its myriad finery.

This event includes reading from ‘C+nto’, Joelle Taylor’s love poem to underground communities forged by women.

About the speakers

Eleanor Medhurst is an independent fashion historian and the author of Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion, as well as the online blog Dressing Dykes (dressingdykes.com). She studied design and fashion history at the University of Brighton, and has worked towards the sharing of queer histories through her involvement with Queer Looks and Queer the Pier, exhibitions at Brighton Museum. She also posts her research online on TikTok (@elliemedhurst) and Instagram (@dressingdykes).

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future.