I used to be scared of dressing like a lesbian – now I couldn’t love it more

Before I begin, I want to say that first and foremost, this is a love letter to waistcoats. Remember that.

Put a waistcoat on and you are really going places – you might be marrying Portia De Rossi later or maybe managing the England football team.

With a waistcoat on, truly anything is possible. And let’s be honest, women in waistcoats are hot – we should actually take a moment here to acknowledge and honour the inventor of the three piece suit, Cate Blanchett.

So, with the fact that I am a waistcoat fan – a champion of them, even – I now want to say this: Waistcoats used to be my biggest ick.

As a teenager, I would shudder, roll my eyes, groan at the thought of women choosing to wear them. ‘Why?’ I would say, as I walked around in my low-rise jeans and my 14 T-shirts layered on top of each other, ‘why do they have to dress like that?’

The ‘they’ I was referring to was lesbians. Of course, I know now that my aversion was not an ick, it was internalised homophobia.

This was not about the waistcoat on the hot woman, it was about the unworn waistcoat inside my heart.

The ‘ick’ I developed surrounding certain ‘lesbian’ fashion extended to – but was not limited to – white vests, leather wrist cuffs (think, Ryan from The OC), keys attached to belts and thumb rings. To be clear these are all things I either wear now or admire on others. If I had enough keys, you’d better believe they’d be on my belt. 

The truth is, then, I was both drawn to and terrified of being identified by these things. I wanted proximity to them and to the people wearing them but there is something very different about knowing who you are and having others perceive you that way.

I was a teenager in the 2000s, which was a time when ‘lesbian’ was a dirty word. As Jill Gutowitz writes in her book, Girls Can Kiss Now, ‘is there anything scarier than hearing that everything you find to be relatable or aspirational will lead to being outcast?’

I wasn’t ready. I did not want to be an outcast. So my waistcoat stayed in the closet.

I wish I could say that there was a lightbulb moment where I realised I wasn’t only being a massive loser but that I was harming myself everytime I judged someone by what they were wearing.

The truth is, over time, I stopped hating myself for fancying women, stopped seeing that as something to chasten or tame and instead, realised it was something to celebrate. I spent time with cool, queer people of all genders who expressed themselves freely and joyfully.

Slowly, things clicked into place. I let myself be intrigued, beguiled, even attracted to the waistcoat.

Everyone’s experience is different. There are people who identify as lesbians and lean towards more traditionally masculine clothes, others more feminine. Some a mix of both depending on the day, their mood and of course, the moon.

I fall into the latter camp.

Some days I want to dress like Kendall Roy trying to take over the company, other days like a teenage boy drinking Monster in the park. Sometimes I want to wear a dress and red lipstick and heels I can’t walk in.

Once I stopped caring about the male gaze, everything changed – I was free. It’s a pleasure now to dress how I like, to put on a baseball cap and a plaid shirt, slide on my 17 rings and look like every other lesbian in the street, nodding at other women walking their rescue greyhounds and complaining about the price of oat milk.

Recently, lesbian fashion has been declared mainstream and ‘sexy and powerful’ by publications like Harpers Bazaar and the New York Post. I think this once would have meant something to me. Made me feel more accepted.

But f**k being accepted, actually. Part of the joy of being queer is thinking outside the box, to challenge the status quo, to live outside the mainstream, to wear things other people could only dream of.

Lesbian fashion is not (exclusively) Bella Hadid dressing like a private schoolboy – it is butch women in suits, it’s practical shoes with statement socks or it’s pleather skirts, fishnets and doc martens.

I asked my queer followers on Instagram to tell me their thoughts on lesbian fashion and someone said ‘clothes that are both hot and practical’ – I think that’s perfect.

As author Daisy Jones writes in her book, All the Things She Said – on iconic, queer staple – the vest, ‘can give off horny energy, or they can give off practical energy, but fundamentally, they can give off both, which is what makes them especially dykey.’ 

Lesbian fashion is not a trend, it’s not even just about clothes themselves, it’s about how queer people wear them – posture and confidence and swagger and camp.

You can’t declare those things fashionable because they have always existed and will always exist.

Trends come and go but waistcoats are forever.

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