Lesbians in fashion10 Images
For the past century, lesbian dressing has gone against mainstream womenswear trends. Historically, queer women – particularly butch lesbians – have rejected typically feminine wardrobes in favour of gender fluid or more masculine ones. It’s partially due to this, and partially due to the rampant homophobia of the 20th century, that lesbians have often been viewed as fashion misfits.
In more recent years, however, the tides have changed. More and more frequently, we see fashion designers citing lesbian icons as their inspirations (Erdem, SS Daley, Dior), or lesbian staples being adopted and popularised in wider culture – take Chopova Lowena’s carabiner skirt, for example. Just last season, Miuccia Prada had Sarah Paulson and Towa Bird walk in the Miu Miu show, and the season before that, London designer Sinéad O’Dwyer presented her collection via passionate sapphic snogging. When it comes to street style, it was once an insult to ‘look like a lesbian’; today, it is an aspiration. And though stereotypes would have us believe that lesbian fashion being fashionable is a recent development, queer women have been cropping up in campaigns and catwalks for the past four decades.
So, to celebrate Lesbian Visibility Week 2025, we take a look back at some of the most influential, impactful and frankly, hottest, lesbian fashion moments to date.
Arguably the most influential and well-known lesbian model of the 90s, Jenny Shimizu was a mechanic before she was scouted by Calvin Klein to appear in the CK One fragrance advert. Notably, CK One was the world’s first openly marketed gender fluid fragrance, marking a new chapter for the beauty industry, but also for androgyny in fashion campaigns. Shot by Steven Meisel and leaning into the grunge aesthetic of the 90s, Klein put Shimizu and her queerness front and centre of major global billboards. “I’m Japanese, 5’7”, a dyke, tattooed, have little hair, and I don’t wear feminine clothes. No one like me had paved the way,” she said in a previous interview. “Calvin was like, ‘You walk how you want to walk, we know your hair’s going to be short, this is how we’re going to introduce you.’” She went on to become the first Asian model to walk for Prada in 1993 and also had relationships with both Madonna and Angelina Jolie.
Before it was New York Fashion Week, it was Olympus Fashion Week, and in 2004, Melbourne-born designer Richard Tyler showed his AW04 collection inside The Atelier at Bryant Park. A series of silk evening gowns came parading down the catwalk, as did 20s-inspired beige tailoring and a lesbian bride to close the show. Her groom? Omahyra Mota Garcia, the androgynous 00s model and actress. Suited and booted in a double-breasted tux, Garcia walks her bride down the runway before kissing her on the cheek. The model also walked for the likes of Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier, and became Miguel Adrover’s muse.
OK OK, although model Milla Jovovich is a staunch queer ally, she isn’t a lesbian. That said, Versace certainly tapped into the lesbian aesthetic in 1998 when the brand cast Jovovich in its Versace Jeans Couture campaign. Pictured wearing lesbian wardrobe staples – a white vest, loose low-slung jeans and a toolbelt – Jovovich is photographed alongside male coworkers on a construction site. Jovovich may not be queer, but these images helped solidify the simple white vest as an integral part of lesbian semiotics.
Speaking of white vests, Prada went viral for its popular (and expensive) versions in 2022. Then, last season, Miuccia Prada whipped out the white vest once again, this time to dress lesbian musician Towa Bird during Miu Miu’s AW25 womenswear show. Her girlfriend Renée Rapp sat front row. In fact, the whole show was brimming with queer icons: Sarah Paulson walked, as did Cortisa Star and Eliot Sumner.
Hillary Taymour’s AW25 Collina Strada show was based on society’s expectations of women. Models curtseyed at the end of the catwalk and played into girlish characters, but in a subverted manner, balloon-like and carefree. At the end of the show, two Collina Strada brides skipped hand in hand, kissing at the end of the runway. Though the designer doesn’t like to be labelled, she does identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Naturally, the lesbian brides received a whopping cheer from the audience.
For his AW97 ready-to-wear show, Jean Paul Gaultier paid homage to black singers of the 20th century, from Josephine Baker to Neneh Cherry. The show featured predominantly Black models, and included an unexpected sapphic snog between Kristen McMenamy and Georgianna Robertson.
Who could forget the iconic kiss shared between models Denise Lewis and Suzie Cave (née Bick) for Vivienne Westwood’s AW90 Portrait collection? The British press had a field day with the next day’s headlines, though it was actually the second time Westwood had models smooching on the runway (the first having happened during the AW89 show).
We couldn’t mention sapphic snogging without mentioning Sinéad O’Dwyer. For the London-based designer’s SS25 presentation last September, she dressed three sets of queer couples in her new collection, each of whom were passionately going at it. The couples continued kissing for the duration of O’Dwyer’s presentation, which caused quite a stir on social media. The prudes deemed it unnecessarily sexual – the rest of us just thought it was hot.
Every year, we see a number of fashion brands release Pride campaigns, but none do it quite like Calvin Klein. As mentioned above, since casting Jenny Shimizu in the 90s, the underwear label has continued to pioneer for the LGBTQ+ community. Its annual Pride campaigns have included the likes of Arca, Kai-Isaiah Jamal, Jari Jones, Honey Dijon and Troye Sivan, and in 2023, the brand cast actor Amandla Stenberg as the face of its Pride campaign, sending the queer community into a frenzy.
Though she hasn’t spoken much about her sexuality in public, Jil Sander has been a pioneer of androgynous, gender-fluid fashion since founding her brand in the late 1960s. She was one of the few lesbian designers featured in the 2013 exhibition A Queer History of Fashion: From The Closet To The Catwalk at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and has been described by Suzy Menkes as “fashion’s first feminist”.
“Lesbian fashion was pioneered by one designer in particular, Jil Sander,” Hamish Bowles also said, in 2020. The Sander aesthetic was even described as “lesbian chic” by fashion scholar Kim Jenkins. “Sander was making these basics, these very chic expensive basics, for the woman who just wants to wear the white button-down shirt,” said Jenkins. Many of the silhouettes we now associate with gender-fluid fashion can be attributed to the German designer. Everybody say thank you, Jil.
