Butch / Dapper / Q / Boi / "Weimar Lesbian" / Style for the discriminating masc-presenting Genderqueer

Presented with a particular eye to those over the age of 30 and over 10 stone if at all possible...

(I will go back and sift links off the Genderqueer thread for future reference.)

((There will be a prize for anyone who correctly guesses how many waistcoats or how many ties I own))

Wow, Anthony posted a lot of "Am I butch?" threads back in the day, huh?

<3 miss U

So far there's been:

http://www.redressnyc.com/masculine-butch-styles/

http://fat-tomboy.tumblr.com/

http://www.dapperq.com/

I thought there had been others but I now cannot find them...

There's also this, though it's outside my budget and subject position: http://tomboytailors.com/

O M effing G

http://www.tomboytailors.com/getzner-small-paisley-cotton-custom-shirt-black-white/

When I get a ~JOB~ come to daddy, you will be MIIIINE

Wow, not just paisley but completely tailored, choose your own buttons, back (box pleat please!) and cuffs style... 12 different collar styles... *rolls over and dies*

The downside is, the kind of job I would have to get to be able to afford those. But the upside is, working that job would give me a place to wear them every day.

hooray! bookmarking this thread.

Oh Style board, I need your help!

I have a job interview for a very corporate workplace tomorrow. I have been rocking "IT Casual" for the past 7 or 8 years so I'm kinda bricking it a bit.

I did dig out my suit, and I went to M&S to locate a new pair of trousers (the jacket still fits, the original trousers were hopeless) but now I'm fretting about what to wear under it. The suit is very basic black. I put some pics on Tumblr, and got a 2 to 1 vote for black shirt/silver tie over white shirt/black tie. I'm worried because black shirt looks quite cool, but it gives a much more distinct subtext than the white one, it's very Weimar Lesbian, which is kind of the subtext I am trying to advertise, but I'm not sure how far up the flagpole I should run it, I dunno. White shirt/black tie, however, looks like I am here to repossess your car (or maybe wipe your brain of alien encounters.) Black shirt/silver tie is probably way more "me" and giving them a good heads up of what kind of "corporate" dress code I would wear, but might be over the line between "Weimar Lesbian" and "plays bass for Interpol". It's just one of those awkward things where you are trying to get across a message, but you don't want to scare the horses. I want them to know what they're getting, but don't want to make ~an issue~ of it.

Also, the black shirt is much much better at not giving BOOB GAP but on the other hand, it looks weird while tucked in, while the white shirt is designed to be tucked in.

ARGH. The guy who interviewed me over the phone wasn't much help over how their dress code would apply to me because they, um, don't have any other women. Which is kind of a red flag in itself, but... HELP.

Both options sound perfectly interview-appropriate (which is different from actual working appropriate ime); you're more comfortable with the black shirt/silver tie (in both style and fit), so I'd go with that!

IME as long as the interviewee is wearing something interview-appropriate, the details of the ensemble aren't nearly as important as everything else they will be looking at in the interview (your tech and communication skills, etc.)

GL! Do tell us how it goes!

Thank you!

And you do bring up a v v important point, which is that feeling comfortable is probably more of a consideration. If I feel uncomfortable, I will act uncomfortably, which will make me less likely to perform well in tech and communication aspects.

yea BB, go with what you feel most comfortable with. you want to feel like 'you'

How conservative is the workplace?

I don't know! My first 2 interviews were over the phone!

It's Financial which usually means conservative (though not my last job, they made it casual deliberately!) but more salient, it is occasionally client-facing. I feel like I should go in what I consider appropriate, and if that doesn't work for them, well, it's clearly not the role for me.

Fair enough. You should definitely wear the color combo that you feel most comfortable in, then. I think for a very conservative industry like finance, the subtle differences between Weimar lesbian, Interpol bass player are going to be lost on them.

I guess if I'm going to code as some species of "freak" to them, what specific species is the sartorial equivalent of quibbling over semantics. What matters is if they can deal with "freak."

Freak and be damned.

Yeah, not to be too blunt but if they hew to the standard finance industry approach to most things, they are going to be too busy processing the fact that you are wearing a tie to worry about sartorial semantics. But I think it's a good way to weed out employers, and I'm a big proponent of wearing clothes that make you feel confident and powerful in interview situations. Good luck! You are going to look fabulous.

Thanks! You're right "confident & powerful" is the best look.

Am now going to wear this to the interview:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HhXrxliETbA/Tefnumd-yiI/AAAAAAAAAJY/m4eoKxlHby0/s1600/tumblr_l2oocolhxB1qa49ego1_500.jpg

(not really ha ha, that's just the first GIS for "Weimar Lesbian" and now I really want a red waistcoat. Again.)

Girls, boys, art, pleasure...

http://www.dapperq.com/2014/06/100-most-stylish-dapperqs-2014/

Armani, Armani, Ah-Ah-Armani...

SO MUCH GOOD HAAAAIR.

That photo riot plus carl's article about buying a suit for a curvy body on a budget have really perked me up. Also I cut even more of my hair off last week and now it really is butch and I've been struggling with being "not-pretty" for a few days but I'm starting to feel it again now.

To be clear I'm a completely cis hetero woman, but I feel better and more myself when I present less feminine-ly and in ways that are more accepting of my physical body and strength qualities. But I also struggle with letting go of the societal approval you get for being "pretty," which I can be if I dress up and make myself up. I've been moving the needle on this a lot by playing with various Robyn-esque/"high and tight" haircuts.

I think I have come to the conclusion (after a year of being too poor to get my hair cut) that the world of Good Hair is just not for me. I am going to be a shaggy hippie until the day I day and that's naught to do with gender (my father has hair longer than I do!) and just my total inability to get to a hairdresser more than once every two years.

That other piece I posted on the trans* thread has got me thinking about the class aspects of Butch vs Dapper, which, I dunno if that is a helpful way of looking at it or not. (I've always been more drawn to dapper than to butch, and I don't know if that's about class, or if it's about rejecting certain aspects and expectations about masculinity. Hmmmm.)

can someone link me to the article about buying a suit for a curvy body on a budget? is it in this thread?

It's in the girl's thread. One moment please.

http://www.autostraddle.com/fat-booty-butch-buys-a-suit-on-a-budget-237812

This kinda is, but kinda isn't on topic, because it's not about Style as such but it's about trans-masculinity, and the things that cis men can learn from trans-masculinity, but either way I thought it was great (though of course the men who need to read it most will never actually bother).

https://cnlester.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/what-cis-men-could-learn-from-trans-masculinities/

Stealing that for my street harassment group's masculinity project work.

crosspost -- Fran Lebowitz! on fashion, and stuff!

I always wore 501 Levi's. They used to make them in San Francisco. Every size was the same size, which sounds obvious, but you would be surprised—and then, I don't know, at some point during globalization they started making them in Mexico, and like every other thing they branched out to places you'd never heard of. So now every single size of Levi's is a different size. They cost less, too, which doesn't make any sense. I wish that real estate were cheaper and clothes were more expensive. But that's what young people want: $2 T shirts that fall apart in the wash....

When we were young, we knew things. We knew basic history, even as it related to fashion. Now, when something reappears, an 18 year old has no clue that it's a revival. Despite the fact that they're almost always online they don't get references.

http://www.elle.com/fashion/personal-style/interviews/a27447/fran-lebowitz-style-interview/

Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board.

I loled