Freak to Chic : "Gay" Men in and out of Fashion after Oscar Wilde

In this unique intervention in the study of queer culture, Dominic Janes highlights that, under the gaze of social conservatism, 'gay' life was hiding in plain sight. Indeed, he argues that the worlds of glamour, fashion, art and countercultural style provided rich opportunities for the construction of queer spectacle in London. Inspired by the legacies of Oscar Wilde, interwar and later 20th-century men such as Cecil Beaton expressed transgressive desires in forms inspired by those labelled 'freaks' and, thereby, made major contributions to the histories of art, design, fashion, sexuality, and celebrity.

Janes reinterprets the origins of gay and queer cultures by charting the interactions between marginalized freaks and chic fashionistas. He establishes a new framework for future analyses of other cities and media, and of the roles of women and diverse identities.

“Clearly the product of long hours in the archives, Dominic Janes' Freak to Chic offers a rich array of queer images and texts from the popular press of the first half of the twentieth century to document the creative variety of non-normative embodiments of sex and gender in an era before now-accepted identity labels.” —Christopher Reed, Pennsylvania State University, USA

“From Oscar Wilde and Cecil Beaton to flourishing inter- and post-war queer cultures, Janes takes his reader through a fascinating and endlessly glamorous story of the freakishly chic manifestations that have helped to galvanize and vilify queer identity. Somewhere between the beautiful and the ugly, the respectable and the profane, the book offers keen insights into the elusive and radical potential of queer style.” —John Potvin, Concordia University, Montreal

“This lavishly illustrated book is a sophisticated and entertaining account of the Twenties interface between camp, fashion, identity politics, and flowers, featuring some of the era's most orchidaceous personalities.” —Jane Stevenson, University of Oxford, UK