Gay Men's Style - Fashion, Dress and Sexuality in the 21st Century Book

RELEASE DATE - 7 SEPTEMBER 2023

Through an astonishing series of interviews, Gay Men’s Style will take you on a dizzying journey through shops, bars, clubs, gyms, workplaces and global city streets. Based on the lived experience of gay men of all ages from the UK, USA, Europe, Australia and Japan, Shaun Cole calls for a more nuanced understanding of gay male dress and style.

Gay male identities in the 21st century are increasingly intersectional, fluid and flexible, from hyper-masculinity and muscularity seen in clubs and on the pages of gay magazines to self-knowing drag culture and androgynous gender play in the fashion industry. Gay Men’s Style explores these multiple identities and the ways in which gay men self-identify and present themselves to the world through dress. This analysis is set alongside seismic shifts in technology, global communication and gay rights to redress and readdress the subject of gay men’s style in a time of social and sexual upheaval.

" Gay Men’s Style addresses both sexuality and culture. Through an astonishing series of interviews, the author takes us on a dizzying spin through shops, bars, clubs, gyms, workplaces and streets of global cities around the world. Always placing the emphasis on real lives and experiences, this important work makes us reconsider how gay men’s dress is continually remade to create looks, desires, communities and a sense of self for work and leisure in a world that remains challenging and normative."
Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia