Unsuitable: Eleanor Medhurst in conversation w/ Zara Siddique

Eleanor Medhurst, the person behind the blog Dressing Dykes, will be coming to Cardiff to celebrate the publication of her book, Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion, in the company of Zara Siddique, co-founder of Lez Read!

About the book

From Sappho and Suffragettes to t-shirts and TikTok, a fascinating journey through the history and politics of lesbian clothing.

The way we dress can show or hide who we are; make us fit in, make us stand out, or make our own community. Yet ‘lesbian fashion’ has been strangely overlooked. What secrets can it reveal about the lives and status of queer women through the ages?

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.

This book is a kaleidoscope of the margins and the mainstream, celebrating trans lesbian style, Black lesbian style, and gender nonconformity. You don’t have to be queer or fashionable to be enthralled by this hidden history. Unsuitable lights it up for the world to see, in all its finery.

About the author

Eleanor Medhurst is a historian of lesbian fashion and author of the blog Dressing Dykes. She has worked on Brighton Museum’s exhibitions Queer Looks and Queer the Pier, and been interviewed by Grazia, Cosmopolitan, Cameron Esposito’s Queery and Gillian Anderson’s What Do I Know?! This is her first book.

Further Information

Alcohol will be served at this event. This is a seated event. The contributors will using a sound system to amplify their input throughout the event, therefore loud sound and noise will be prevalent through the evening.

Accessibility Information

This event is situated inside The Queer Emporium itself. Access to this can be gained via our shop front entrance, which includes a step or via our side entrance, which is level with the ground but please let us know in advance if you would like to use this one as it is often locked. There is also a disabled toilet on site.

The Queer Emporium is situated at the lower half of St. Mary’s Street. There is a taxi rank diagonally across from the space and Uber cars are able to collect people from the Marriott Hotel, which is approximately 0.4 miles away. Here, many buses also stop to collect passengers and allow them to alight. Parking is available in St. David’s Hall 2 and the John Lewis Car Park, both of which are approximately 0.2 miles from The Queer Emporium.

Pay It Forward

If you are facing any financial barriers that may prevent you from attending the event, please contact the bookshop team. They have a limited number of Pay It Forward tickets available for all of our events.