When one conjures the image of a dandy, it is almost always a man—Oscar Wilde in his velvet and wit, André Leon Talley cloaked in opulence, or Dapper Dan remixing Gucci with Harlem bravado. Dandyism has long been understood as a male-coded aesthetic—a flamboyant rebellion against conformity, centered around impeccable tailoring, refined tastes, and a performative persona. But history, as it often does, has quietly folded away the stories of women who also donned the suit, wielded a cane, and redefined what it meant to be seen.
Enter the Female Dandy – Not All Dandies Were Men
The female dandy—an often-overlooked counterpart in the narrative of style—has always existed, albeit in the margins. Their stories were not as widely chronicled or celebrated, in part because they disrupted not just the fashion status quo but the rigid expectations of gender. They were bold, eccentric, and subversive in ways that made society uncomfortable. And because they often lived at the intersection of gender nonconformity and queerness, their contributions to dandyism were hidden beneath layers of social taboo and historical omission.
But even in the shadows, they left a trail.
Long before the term “dandy” crystallized in the late 18th century, there was Christina, Queen of Sweden—a sovereign who ruled with intellect and dressed with audacity. Known for her refusal to marry and her preference for menswear, Christina blurred gender lines with ease. Though she predates dandyism as a cultural movement, her choices foreshadowed the deliberate gender play and flamboyance that would define the aesthetic centuries later.
By the 19th century, women who shared the dandy’s affinity for sartorial splendor emerged under different labels: dandizette, quaintrelle—terms that acknowledged their presence while still differentiating them from their male counterparts. Yet these women didn’t merely mimic men; they carved out their own style code, fusing feminine elegance with masculine restraint. Their fashion was not just about looking good—it was a coded language of resistance, identity, and visibility.
The Jazz Age brought with it a seismic shift. In the smoky clubs of Harlem and the vibrant world of the Harlem Renaissance, women like blues singer Gladys Bentley shattered the mold. Bentley wore white tuxedos with tails, bow ties, and top hats—her swagger as magnetic as her voice. Her presence was political, her fashion a declaration. She wasn’t just cross-dressing; she was cross-examining the entire idea of femininity. In a society that insisted on binaries, Bentley stood in the overlap and made it look effortless.
Ma Rainey, too, played with the codes. While she often wore traditional feminine dress, her music—particularly the lyrics to “Prove It on Me Blues”—offered glimpses of a subversive identity that challenged heteronormative ideals. She sang about wearing a collar and tie, flirting with women, and refusing to apologize for it. In her words, we find the essence of dandyism: the self fashioned as performance, truth wrapped in style.
Then came Stormé DeLarverie, the woman often credited with igniting the Stonewall Uprising. With her crisp suits and suave demeanor, DeLarverie performed as a drag king in the Jewel Box Revue, a trailblazing showcase of gender illusion. Offstage, she was a community protector and queer activist. Her fashion was armor, and like many female dandies, she didn’t dress to disguise who she was—she dressed to declare it.
In art and literature, female dandies continued to push against the grain. The painter Gluck, born Hannah Gluckstein, rejected both gender norms and gendered names. Gluck dressed in tailored jackets and men’s shirts, signing paintings only with a single mononym. Their androgyny wasn’t a costume—it was conviction. And their legacy endures, influencing fashion today, as seen in designers like S.S. Daley and Erdem, who have referenced Gluck’s world and figures like Stephen Gordon, the protagonist of The Well of Loneliness, in recent collections.
Today, the landscape of dandyism has shifted. Women’s suiting is no longer strictly a symbol of queer identity, and gender-fluid fashion is increasingly mainstream. But the roots of these evolutions trace back to the defiant grace of the female dandy—those who dared to be both spectacle and substance in a world that wanted them to be invisible.
To call them dandies is to acknowledge their rightful place in the lineage of fashion revolutionaries. But perhaps what they truly embodied was something even more radical: a refusal to be defined, and a relentless commitment to self-expression—even when the world wasn’t ready to look.
Not all dandies were men. Some were queens. Some were rebels. All were icons.
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