The journey of LGBT couture, from the subversive to mainstream, has been one fraught with challenges. But despite the hardships, it won't be wrong for us to conclude that the influence of their fashion on society, taken as a whole, is as profound as it is multifaceted. Here's a look at the journey New Delhi: There is nothing Queer about how a person dresses, especially if they are comfortable in their own attire but that’s not how society has perceived clothing for genders.
For decades, like we have defined roles for particular sexes, we have even adventured towards boxing fashion into a stereotype! So much so, that the erstwhile diktat made trousers synonymous with androgyny while the gowns were considered feminine. It was all thanks to role models like Marlene Dietrich (an icon in feminism) and Katharine Hepburn (American actress known for classics like ‘Little Women’) who popularised women wearing trousers, thus challenging the strictly gendered norms of the time. And the rest, as they say, is history.
How and when did the LGBT community start influencing fashion trends? Since forever! We turned to a sociologist to throw some light on this and she was taken aback. “Wow, that’s a first..
.me answering a question on the history of high street fashion!,” quipped Meera Palgaonkar, a 73-year-old professor of Mumbai University. Her voice cracking over the phone, Palgaonkar informed this reporter that the LGBT communities were in fact responsible for gender fluidity in.
