Dress to impress: Six fresh faces of lesbian fashion

Fashion and lesbians – sometimes understood as the baking soda and vinegar of the gay community (an explosive mess). For the longest time, only gay men were considered fashionable, the LGBT community’s women relegated to cargo shorts and ill-fitting menswear.

Here at Out Front we’ve been guilty of perpetuating the thought, detailing everything imaginable within the world of men’s fashion, from skin-tight trunks to shoes and from tighty-whities to slacks. Despite the featured cornucopia of men’s apparel, there has been just one recent article relating to feminine clothing: a piece on sundresses. Helpful to some, but not to all, given that some lesbians we know would rather don a blazer of hot coals than step into a dress for a day.

So we’ve set out to discover the multiplicity of women’s looks, helped by six unique Denver ladies, each with her own distinct style. Slowly but surely, lesbians in Denver are expanding the fashion spectrum, showing that there is an endless array of variations beyond the confines of “lipstick lesbian” and “butch.”

What is it that makes the world think lesbians are strangers to fashion? Do we believe that with the rejection of male attraction, lesbians abandon every feminine inkling, particularly the über-girly urges to shop and dress up? Digging deeper, perhaps these unattractive stereotypes were formed as a defense mechanism within homophobic circles, a still circulated underlying fear of homosexuality that lingers still. Like many stereotypes, some people think if they can identify lesbians from afar by their shape, hair and clothing, they can steer clear of contact or communication. Cargo shorts and cropped hairstyles become more socially-acceptable versions of David’s star or the scarlet letter, in the same fashion that the love of all things glittery and pink are stereotypes that many thought they could identify (and subsequently avoid) gay men with.

Thankfully, these stereotypes are eroding. Some of this openness can be accredited to Ellen DeGeneres, who has carved out a look all her own since she came out publicly in 1997. Sparking the expansion of the lesbian dialogue in the U.S., DeGeneres also showed the public that being a lesbian and being fashionable is not hard to imagine at all – with her stylish suits and Converse shoes becoming an inspiration for many trendy females, both straight and gay.

“Ellen helped people understand that there wasn’t just men’s clothes and women’s clothes, but that there can be an intermingling between the two styles,” said Samantha Smith, whose style she says is commonly compared with DeGeneres’ by her friends and family.

With the help of DeGeneres, her more feminine wife Portia de Rossi and hit TV shows like The L Word, lesbians all over the nation are finding a new voice, one that is free to shout outside of the narrow definitions society may place upon them.