Countering Dyke Wardrobe Anxiety
No one has ever praised me for my fashion sense. In the 60s and 70s it didn’t matter. Lesbians all wore pretty much the same thing–jeans and T shirts. I bought my flannel shirts at JC Penney in the boys’ department, boys size 18. I worked construction and so I could wear the same outfits for work and play. For lesbian dress up events I bought a used tuxedo. But straight affairs like weddings left me perplexed as I surveyed my closet.
I didn’t have a thing to wear.
By the 1980s I felt the need for something a little dressier. I enlisted my friend Joan and her tailor girlfriend Lucy to help me. They accompanied me to Macy’s in downtown San Francisco to buy what my father might describe as a sport coat. Something you would wear with slacks of a different color.
One of the highlights of my week used to be looking through the Macy’s ad in the Sunday Chronicle. It wasn’t a catalog, more like a magazine, even bigger than the Sunday New York Times Magazine. There, in gorgeous color photographs, were all the things we desired–clothes, kitchen appliances, leather furniture, gadgets. You had to go to the Sears catalog for tools, and I drooled over those pictures too. My collective houses had little by way of possessions–furniture found on the street, 2X4 and plywood beds, brick and board bookcases, tables refashioned from electrical spools, mismatched kitchen utensils and dishes from Goodwill. We lusted after the new, even if we dared not admit it to our politically correct circle of friends.
Department stores both excited and overwhelmed me. I loved the window and in-store displays even more than the color pictures. Macy’s was the best, not so hoity toity that you felt unwelcome, but still very classy. Macy’s had signed me up for my very first credit card at a time when most credit cards were still restricted to men. I was as loyal as a customer with little money could be. But I was overwhelmed by the number of departments and choices. I invariably narrowed them down by only shopping the sale racks, usually in the far back of each department. In fact, I could never bring myself to pay full price for anything, so I usually never got beyond them.
Now it was time to use my credit card to buy something new. At Macy’s, Lucy steered me toward the Misses section and we each began perusing a different rack. Cutting edge fashion in the 80s featured big boxy jackets and oversized shirts with padded shoulders. I thought the style would look great on me. Lucy was the one who found the jacket, boxy and big, size 12. It was bright fuchsia. Should I buy it? Would it be a good wardrobe investment? Both women encouraged me. And, while Joan was a sister construction worker, Lucy was a clothes person. I took her advice.
My jacket was well received in San Francisco. I stood out in a crowd of colorful outfits, but I fit in. Fuchsia became my favorite color, and my color consultant, Lucy, said it best complemented my pink white girl complexion.
My travels as a tradeswoman organizer and author took me to New York several times in the 80s. I would stay with carpenter Barbara Trees who lived in a converted warehouse near the tip of Manhattan. The apartment took up part of a floor of the high-rise warehouse—one big room. Residents had filed suit when the owner sought to evict them. They won and were able to stay in the building. Remodeled plumbing necessitated climbing a couple of steps to get to the shower and toilet.
On my first trip to New York I was tasked with meeting with the Ms. Foundation to ask for funding for the tradeswoman organization I was working with. Barbara was out of town but she left a key and I stayed in her loft alone, so I had no one to ask for fashion advice. She was also a construction worker, so she may not have helped that much.
Fashion anxiety overtook me. What does a clueless West Coast dyke wear to a meeting in NYC? I didn’t know anyone in New York, but I had the phone number of the writer and activist Sarah Schulman. She put my mind at ease, advising me that all would be ok no matter what I wore.
The morning of my appointment I slipped on black shoes and slacks, then topped off the outfit with my fuchsia jacket. In Barbara’s mirror I looked fabulous. Locking the many locks on her door, I rode the elevator to the street and walked out into a sea of people on a sun shiny Manhattan day. Wall Street traders in black suits, ladies walking little dogs–everyone was wearing black. Suddenly it seemed like every single pair of eyes turned toward me and my fuchsia jacket. I began walking purposefully toward the subway and I got a couple of blocks before I had to turn around. I couldn’t do it. I went back to Barbara’s and changed into a black leather jacket I had worn on the plane.
We didn’t get the money. Would we have gotten it if I’d been able to wear the fuchsia jacket?
Epilogue
Barbara Trees was so traumatized by the 9-11 attack that she moved away from New York City. We lost touch after that.
Sarah Schulman joined the faculty of Northwestern University in Illinois in 2016. Her writing has centered on queer life and AIDS activism in NYC. Her latest book is The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. In search of activist guidance I actually bought her tome Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, written using interviews as part of the ACT UP Oral History Project.
Macy’s photo by Vladan Raznatovic on Unsplash
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