From Lesbian and Gay to Queer: Challenging the hegemony in collecting and exhibiting LGBT fashion and dress

In 1994 the Victoria and Albert museum (V&A), London, staged its groundbreaking 'Streetstyle' exhibition, which not only investigated subcultural styles and their influence on high fashion, but also included a section that dealt with Lesbian and gay dress and fashion (de la Haye and Dingwall 1996, Cole 2000) As part of a symposium associated with the Streetstyle exhibition I presented a paper entitled 'What a Queer Collection' that addressed the gay and lesbian materials displayed in the exhibition in the context of wider concerns around collecting materials relating to lesbian, gay and bisexual lives and art and design materials both in the V&A and in other museums and galleries. Nineteen years later, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York held the first major exhibition to deal exclusively with fashion and dress of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender people (Steele 2013). This chapter begins with an explanation of some of the concerns around the inclusion of lesbian and gay material in the Streetstyle exhibition. It then looks at the period between the V&A and FIT exhibitions in light of the concerns I raised in my 1995 paper, particularly those around the collection and display of dress and fashion, and related imagery and representations, relating to LGBT people. While there is an increasing amount of writing on LGBT fashion and dress (Cole 2000, Geczy and Karaminas 2013, Steele 2013), there is very little written on its presence in museums and archive collections. Thus in this essay, I will consider this in light of debates raised around the collection and display of LGBT art (Atkins 1996, Rifkin and Camille 2001, Steorn 2010) and other collections in museums, galleries and archives in UK, US and Australia (McIntyre 2007, Petry 2007, Vanegas 2002)