Face of fashion; She’s got the look

People crack jokes about dungarees when you mention the concepts of 'lesbians' and 'fashion' but for me, the big one was always blazers. Blue blazers with brass buttons worn over crisp shirts, possibly with the collars turned up. A chunky lighter, a man's watch and a gait like Monty just returned from the Battle of El Alamein. Ah, those were the days.
It is easy to understand why lesbians have abandoned their coded outfits of old. As Reina Lewis, a Professor in Fashion Studies at the London College of Fashion points out, the evolution of lesbian dress is inevitably related to what is happening in the mainstream.

'In the 70s and early 80s lots of lesbians wanted to reject dominant models of femininity - this was not just about asserting that women could find other women attractive who were not conventionally 'pretty' - but also because many lesbians were involved in, or influenced by, the women's movement and the anti-consumerist ethos of many feminists.'

Slaves to fashion
Today, politics have become more diversified (watered down, some would say), so young dykes are just as likely to pledge their allegiance to the politics and dress sense of the latest Shoreditch electro band as they are to the imperatives of butch or femme. Reina Lewis asserts that even lesbians who claim to be uninterested in fashion are still slaves to the trends that are trickling down off the international catwalks.
'We might think that the staples of the lesbian butch look have not changed much in the last 40 years - jeans, belts, men's watches, T-shirt or man's shirt, short hair, men's shoes, etc. But the versions of these items that you see in the bars or clubs today are very much this season's version. For example, jeans in the mid 80s were baggy, worn scrunched in at the waist with oversize T-shirts tucked in. But now, after more than a decade of body-conscious form-fitting clothing, most lesbians (butch and femme) wear skinny T-shirts and this year's jeans.

Britain's top heterosexual fashion bunnies have a pretty glamorous idea of what lesbians wear.
Sara Buys, fashion features editor for Harper's Bazaar says she is pleasantly surprised whenever she hangs out at the Candy Bar in London. 'I think they all look like Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry - short hair, good trainers, really slim and tall with boyfriend jeans.'
She declares that any savvy straight girl knows that lesbians no longer wear dungarees but adds that lesbians still seem to be into 'sensible shoes' in the form of chunky boots or good trainers. 'I can't remember the last time I saw a fashionable lesbian struggling in Jimmy Choo high heels - that's just not the look they go for.'

Interestingly enough, she points out that current fashion is focusing heavily on a 'lesbian silhouette,' i.e. it is trying to get straight girls to dress like dykes. Dykes, that is, as translated through the eyes of gay boy fashion designers.
Karl Lagerfeld, for instance, created a photographic campaign for Dom Pérignon Champagne this summer, which has Claudia Schiffer dressed as a 'tomboy', as he euphemistically calls it - black suit, white shirt, black tie, slickback hair. The giveaway that she is no real 'tomboy' is that she is wearing black opaque tights (black tights, yuk!) under her trousers. Where Karl has been quite clever in his styling is the way he has got Claudia sitting - not neatly cross-legged but with her right leg hooked at 45 degrees over the left leg, the ankle of the right resting defiantly on the knee of the left. This subtle touch suggests that looking like a lesbian is more about intangibles such as posture and attitude than it is about clothes.

Meanwhile, so-called 'biker chic' will be all over the shops this autumn, and this July's US Vogue featured an article about masculine looks for autumn called 'How to Borrow from the Boys'. But in these days of such heightened gender sophistication, you have to ask one question: borrowing from what kind of boy?
Like biological women who decide they want to adopt a male gender, fashionable women do not necessarily want to model themselves on Stan Ogden from Coronation Street. Similarly, the 'boy' that a lot of fashion designers are pointing women towards is not by the kind of rugger bugger who spends his Saturday nights down the pub farting and telling smutty jokes.

Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of Made for Each Other: a History of Oscar Dressing, believes that 'there is more of a cross-dressing angle going on. I'm thinking Giorgio Armani's Prive collection which debuted in Paris at the July couture shows and which was based on David Bowie.'
Rebecca Smith is a gay woman and the art director at Lula, a hip new fashion mag for kids with a queer sensibility, as well as a designer for high fashion magazines such as Vogue and Elle. She is not particularly wowed by the current hullabaloo with girls wearing boy's clothes. 'The androgynous look has always been around,' she says with a shrug. 'I mean, come on, Marlene Dietrich and Madonna. But what I have noticed is how boys dress like girls too in their ultra skinny tight jeans, so everyone almost blends into one. You're not sure if they are a boy or girl until you cop a feel!'

The skinny look
Likewise, current high fashion means that you often can't tell the straight girls from the gay girls. Sara Buys describes this new androgynous look as a 'modern Patti Smith kind of vibe.' She adds that it is 'definitely worn by plenty of straight girls so boundaries are blurring.' Key items include things like an Ann Demeulemeester white shirt, Acne black jeans, a tailored Stella McCartney black jacket, a Rick Owens skinny leather jackets, anything from Noir and a pair of Yves Saint Laurent boots.
The word 'skinny' keeps cropping up. Alas, skinny is very fashionable right now and ironically, as all fashion bunnies know, it is more important to have a skinny body than to have a fashionable outfit. The quest to find looser shapes without looking old- fashioned is just as hard for dykes as it is for straight women. But the good news for dykes is that daring eye contact and a confident gait (including Monty just back from El Alamein) are more important than being in fashion when it comes to scoring in a night out situation.

Personally, I think transvestitism is the way ahead. Femininity - in the Marilyn Monroe or the Shirley Bassey sense - is a masquerade, whether it is a man dressing up to play the part, or a woman. Reina Lewis says that at Tart, the women's salon she hosts, she likes to do the female drag queen thing by wearing very high heels. She explains that she aims for a 'theatrical presentation of my femme-ness, rather than trying to make it look "natural".'
Heels are sexy because they give you a posture that makes you look powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Indeed, the most killer lesbian look of all is the black suit worn with high heels (Hedi Slimane suit and Christian Louboutin black 5- inch patent stilettos to make you the true bitch of the ball).

Everyone goes on about how Helmut Newton's women - naked chicks in dagger heels or chicks in black suits and stilettos - are a male fantasy. Well, of course they are - but they are also a perfect lesbian fantasy because you can make the image real. Most straight girls aren't butch enough to pull off that dominatrix vibe. Cycle to your destination with the heels in your bag if you can't afford a taxi, put them on in a doorway and then walk into the club with a well practised walk that combines a perky Marilyn Monroe and a drunk Courtney Love.