ABSTRACT
If Sedgwick’s analytical method reveals silences and gaps to be symptoms of heterosexist culture, fashion and proto-queer theorist Roland Barthes has turned his analytical eye on revealing details throughout his career and especially in his theory of the dandy. Gays and lesbians have indeed learned to speak about their sexuality by not naming it directly, but through their clothing, style, and behavioral signifiers. The Gaultier exhibition presented a single designer’s collections from the 1970s to the present. The aim of the show was to explain Gaultier’s excellence in transforming the styles of the street and sexual subcultures into desirable haute couture objects. The strongest–and queerest–part of the FIT exhibition was definitely the section of AIDS activist T-shirts. The collection of activist T-shirts was a potent reminder of how the gay and lesbian community was forced to take action and radically revise its politics.
