This book is a treasure! It follows the history of gay men's dress from the days of Oscar Wilde to the 90s, and by necessity along the way explains the cultural changes in and around gay groups.
It explains hidden and implicit cultural meanings, is sourced from interviews, magazines, and lots and lots of other books and articles. I can't overstate how in-depth and conscientously the information is presented.

While being very descriptive, it's also to the point, and comes with a huge bibliography and lots of footnotes. I'll follow up a couple of those, and I like I have a much better understanding of the evolution and context of a lot of gay … traditions, I guess?

My only niggle: I had the impression that the issue of race could've been tackled more: It's a part of the book, and occasionally mentioned in terms of how black gay men's dress was different from others, but not very much/often. I can't judge how much of this is just a scoping or sourcing issue, and I appreciated that it was mentioned repeatedly.

Since this book focuses on dress, it skirts the issue of differentiating between gay men and trans women – I completely understand and support this choice, but you should be aware that naturally a lot of the descriptions of late 19th/early 20th century dress sounds like a fair share of the gay men back then may have prefered to be trans women today, and if you don't want to engage in that topic, you may want to skip the book or the earlier chapters. ( )

A straight man in a drag troupe may be unusual, but then neither Kellan nor any of his fellow “Fabulettes” want to fit into a stereotype. And that is really what this story is about, blurring lines of sexuality included. It may be listed as a “gay erotic romance”, but I think that label doesn’t quite do this story justice. It’s a glimpse into Kellan and Casey’s life as friends, but it neither resolves anything regarding their friendship nor does it change Kellan’s sexuality. What it does do is show how Kellan discovers that he may not be as straight as he thought, and in that sense his world at the end of the story is a completely different place.

Kellan has always enjoyed dressing in girls’ and later women’s clothes. For him it’s about feeling sexy, and he considers it a hobby. Most of his fellow troupe members are gay men, but one is a transwoman, so Kellan is used to being around people with varying sexual orientations and gender identities, He just never assumed the same applies to him, and I loved how a “close encounter of the personal kind” with his best friend Casey changes his self-perception.

If you like stories outside the traditional boxes of gender and sexuality identity, if two men who are friends, and maybe more, discovering a new part of their relationship sounds interesting, and if you’re looking for a read that is as entertaining and hot as it is thought-provoking, then you will probably like this short story.


NOTE: This book was provided by JMS Books for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )