I’ll skip the long introduction and get to the good stuff:
Dolce & Gabbana, Fall 2011
This image is nothing new. Helmut Newton did it in French Vogue in 1979:
Helmut Newton, 1979
And more recently I posted this one from French Vogue, 2005.
But I’m not complaining. It’s all good. More, please! I’m talking to you, late-to-the-game American Vogue.
I just wanted to share this excellent…tumblr (?) that I came across whilst Googling. Who runs this? Who is the delightful person to bring us this image:
When you get this ping, Vintage Lesbian Tumblr, comment me. We must be friends.
If it’s not fashion, it’s alcohol. In this case, a cuddle-puddle of gorgeous femmes looking ravenously at each other as they sip their ruby-coloured drinks.
I don’t know about you, but that’s what alcohol does to me, too.
This ad was in the August 2011 issue of Food and Wine. A mixed gender audience, I presume, and therefore this ad can’t be added to my ever-growing collection of weirdly homoerotic ads aimed at straight women. I think there’s a trend here, and I want some tidy sociological theory to tie it all up. Any ideas?
Forbidden Fruit, Fragli/Prosecco Ad, Auust 2011
Another fashion photograph that hints at homoeroticism and includes “the sister thing“. It doesn’t have a strong alienation element, but something akin that I don’t have a term for yet but know as the “come join us, Viewer” look.
I find this especially interesting, given that the ad was published in a fairly straight woman’s magazine, In Style. It’s interesting, but not surprising, since most female homoerotic advertising appears to be aimed at straight women.
Buffalo Jeans Ad Campaign, Fall 2010
Be a domineering mother and have a Homer Simpson of a husband.
Sage advice from Growing Up Straight: What Every Thoughtful Parent Should Know About Homosexuality by Peter and Barbara Wyden, copyright 1968
“Lesbian homosexuals are less interested in sex per se than their male counterparts.” (pg. 75)
“What then, does set off female homosexuality?…’Our basic contention is that homosexuality in women is a safety valve, the means of making an adjustment to intolerable conflicts engendered in childhood as the result of an interplay of powerful psychological forces within the family.” (pg. 75-76)
“Joan was sent to Bellvue hospital by a judge in a New York court who felt that she was a delinquent in need of treatment… at 15, Joan refused to wear a dress…Joan’s mother was a cool, unloving, highly efficient accountant.” (pg. 76)
Joan’s story is elaborated on at length. Needless to say, her domineering mother and hapless father were the cause of her homosexuality.
I do always try to not make light of the truths of the past that have since become falsities. Some, though, are too juicy not to feel smug at. , part
Advertising companies seem to have access to an expansive database of Victorian pornography that I don’t know about. My favorite book on the subject is 1000 Nudes, and I feel that it has a monopoly on the subject. But every so often I’ll come across a Tekserve or random alcohol ad that taunts me with its lack of citations. This isn’t strictly Victorian (1920s, maybe?) but I place it in the same category because of its aesthetic.
Fall 2009/10 season
The way the woman on the left is grasping the lapel of the woman on the right seems intimate, to me. Their faces are too close together for them to be friends. I think they have been together for a long while.
This is scanned from a recent issue of New York Magazine.
Lesbian imagery in fashion photography is one of my pet loves, so I was thrilled with Missoni’s Fall 2008-09 ad campaign.
Elle doesn’t use the word “lesbian” in their blurb (page 292, I forget which issue), but it’s pretty clear what the source material and Missoni were doing. According to Elle, Missoni was referencing the 1970 movie The Conformist.
I haven’t seen the movie, but from this still it looks like a humdinger.
Incidentally, Threads Magazine has an article recently featured on how to make the wrap in Missoni’s ad. See issue April/May 2009 page 78, entitled “Envelop Yourself,” by Fred Bloebaum. I can’t find it online yet, sadly.
Long before lesbian imagery was accepted in pop culture, fashion photographers published in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar got away with publishing suggestive photographs of women together. Who was the photographer who denied that there was any lesbian implication, he just wanted to be able to photograph two dresses at the same time?
This image is from a March 1981 Versace advertising campaign. I got it from a New York Times video slideshow on Richard Avedon. The International Center of Photography in Manhattan will have an exhibit of Avedon’s work on display from May 15-Sept 6, 2009.
Photographed by Richard Avedon
As promised, here are the two photos that went along with the article from Rags 1971.
Jill Bray, gay girl in 1971
Susan Walsh, furniture refinisher and gay girl
The girl in the hat has a pretty groovy look, don’t you think?
I searched for all the women online to see if any were still around. The only one I was able to find information about was Wanda Van Dusen, who committed suicide in 1995.
If you have information about any of these women, please let me know. A retrospective interview would be a most amazing project.
NYC-based costume historian, dressmaker, and lesbian dilettante.
