How the Humble Tank Became a Queer Fashion Staple for Generations

Mercury isn't the only music icon with ties to the queer community associated with the modest vest. Think Whitney Houston's self-titled album cover, the music video for Lady Gaga's debut single Just Dance (naturally, revealing a disco ball bra underneath), Jennifer Lopez at the 2000 VMAs, and the uniform unofficial from the British group WHAM!.

From music to cinema, the white vest has become the reference item for both male pin-ups and autonomous female characters. Full of themes on sexuality, the classic film A tram named Desire helped popularize the white vest, and its macho leading man, Marlon Brando, admitted to having homosexual relations decades after the film's release.

Critics saw Ridley Scotts Extraterrestrial as an allegory about gender for decades, with Sigourney Weavers' character Ripley undoubtedly queer-coded. From one science fiction legacy to another; before the release of The matrix franchise, trans sisters The Wachowskis (then brothers Larry and Andy) released the iconic 1996 lesbian film Related, and on the film poster? You guessed it: a white vest.

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Ridley Scotts Extraterrestrial

More recently, there has been intensely camp Magic Mike franchise, which sees lead Channing Tatum donning the white vest with lots of body oil, Angelina Jolies Lara Croft And Fast and Furious Letty also aligns with bisexual clothing tropes, both wearing white vests. Even the most “feminine” stereotype of all, Mean girls' Regina George wore the vest, with purple bra cutouts, courtesy of Lindsay Lohan's character Cady Heron (significantly in the 2024 remake of the franchise, Georges' character was played by lesbian actor René Rapp ). Wherever you fall on the spectrum, be it macho, twink, butch, femme, the vest has been there, done that and got the T-shirt (well, the vest).

The cyclical nature of popular culture means the vest has been taken off screens and onto the streets, with iconic Levis adverts and landmark fashion campaigns from Calvin Klein and Gucci encouraging mass consumption of the garment. The white vest has become fashionable again after the AW22 runway season. Bottega Veneta offered a high-end version with jeans, igniting the normcore trend to its most luxurious capabilities. Trans model and actor Hunter Schafer took it into the stratosphere at Prada during the closing of their show, while Loewe took note of the hype with a blockbuster monogram version.

Never has a simple garment had such an impact. For AW24, brands like Carven, Eckhaus Latta, Schiaparelli and Stella McCartney are still celebrating the white cardigan, and its hold on the elite luxury sector remains omnipotent. The industry still has a long way to go when it comes to body diversity, especially on the runway, but it’s essential to keep in mind the universality of the garment.

Stella McCartney Fall-Winter 2024

“Wearing a white cardigan makes me feel strong and sexy,” said model Florence Huntington-Whiteley ELLE UK. “It’s fluid and flexible, just like queer people. It's the perfect piece to make an outfit more masculine or feminine; I like to harness these energies and styles based on how I'm feeling that day.

Just as it can be worn by any gender or sexuality, the white vest can also be worn by any body shape. Its wearability, coupled with an accessible price point (unless you invest in a designer iteration, of course) means that, more than the tricky subjectivity of denim, the white vest is arguably the most inclusive piece of clothing in the world. It can be worn as an everyday underwear as well as a casual top, or in the case of Nadine Noor, founder of Pxssy Palace, it can be a political statement.

“The white vest has been used as a symbol of protest and liberation in LGBTQ+ history and has always been a powerful tool of self-expression,” comments Noor. “It’s been a symbol of masculinity and working-class culture since the 1940s, reclaimed by lesbians in the 1980s and now – we want to signal to each other that we are queer.” We want to take things that are traditionally masculine and reclaim them for ourselves, in new ways that span gender, across the spectrum of queerness.

The white vest is dynamic and evolves with the times to reflect the world around it. Its variability leaves room for interpretation for the wearer; whether it is choosing to follow the catwalks or taking a sociocultural stance. The irony lies in the fact that the most loaded item of clothing to carry this pride may not be a rainbow flag, but rather a plain white vest.

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