The Village People, the chart-topping musical group which made music for the predominantly gay disco scene, was famous not only for its catchy dance music, but its cast of masculine characters. This rugged, functional clothing was designed for coal mines, railroad tracks and construction sites, but it became popular in the queer community before it gained mainstream appeal in the last decade. Though the queer community has its own complex system of cultures and subcultures, we want to focus on workwear. But as the fight for gay rights progressed, gay people found novel ways of dressing to signal their affiliation to others in-the-know. What you might not realize is that much of the fashion that has seeped into popular menswear today has been propagated and popularized by the gay community.įor years, because there wasn’t much else available, the queer people wore heteronormative garb, passing as straight in an unaccepting society.
Whether it’s a certain color, accessory, brand or silhouette, subcultures have taken anything and everything in clever and overt ways. Darryl Brown Is Designing a New Kind of Workwear
