I want to feel like I'm floating.”Ī post shared by DARKWAH a teenager, Darkwah worked at a luxury department store with a stuffy dress code of “boring, average” black suits, but small acts of defiance, such as “a pink tie and pink silk socks” made them feel more like themselves in the uniform. That's kind of how I want to feel all the time. Because when you move, you see all of the ‘flourish’, you know? The longer the hair, the more articulate the movement - you feel like you're moving through water. I've grown my nails long, and now I feel like my arms are complete. It felt like a way I could express myself, when not necessarily everyone around me understood my queerness yet.”ĭarkwah reflects on a former, more masculine look: a shaved head, a beard, and “trousers with a really nicely polished shoe.” They explain, “I realised when I started growing my hair that there was a whole other side of my energy that I had repressed, like this…femme side. My parents were both into fashion, so I could get away with wearing pink, lavender, and mint green, even though they were on more masculine garments. I identify as non-binary, with they/them pronouns, and so I just flow very freely between the binaries. Darkwah says, “I grew up queer in a traditional Ghanaian family and learned to experiment with clothing in very subtle ways at first.
Find Darkwah on Instagram: Instagram is full of bold, unapologetic outfits, but they explain that this wasn’t always the case when they were younger. But then when I go to a gay bar in London, I'm like, ‘oh, let me do bimbo-core for the night,’ and I'll dress in an ultra feminine way knowing that I’m not being hyper-sexualised in that space.” DarkwahĪrtist and creator Darkwah Kyei-Darkwah believes that self-expression helps us connect with each other more easily. “If I’m in big platforms and my big jacket, I don’t find that as many men bother me inappropriately. We're just conditioned to be straight.” She notes that for some queer women especially, clothing can act as a protective armour. Simone ponders: “If sexuality exists on a sliding scale, it’s illogical to assume that we’d all start on one end of that scale. But on an app full of (mostly) younger people trying to find themselves, and sort life into neat, understandable categories, even something as innocent as the cuff of a jean can take on a hidden meaning, depending who you ask - or what your algorithm has learned to show you. Silver hardware jewellery too, and maybe…blazers I think are quite gay – like an oversized blazer? And anything with a platform.” Of course, most of these items on their own are seemingly insignificant plain enough to have a space in almost anyone's wardrobe – straight or otherwise. There's also ‘the ugliest sweater you've ever seen in your entire life’. Martens, but for a while, it was cuffed jeans, wasn’t it – that was a big one.
I feel like in the UK, it's still we very much label ourselves.”Ī post shared by simone murphy talk turns to the queer style identifiers perpetuated by TikTok in recent years, and the popular ones she remembers. The beauty of presenting in a less traditionally “straight” way, Simone explains, is that “then you don't have to go through the process of repeatedly coming out once you've done it the first time - the big monumental one.” She continues, “I travel a lot with work - I was in Berlin and LA recently, and I feel like sexuality is just more of a fluid thing there like you don't have to address it. “I feel like the beauty of being queer in your 20s is that you almost feel like a teenager again, because you're getting to fully explore that part of yourself that maybe you weren't so comfortable with before.”
So I did that thing where I went out and got the gayest haircut you could possibly have. Find Simone on Instagram: Simone, “After I came out, I felt like I could be a lot more queer-presenting.
She describes her style as a mix of charity shop finds and classic staples, influenced by subcultures around the world from her travels. Simone, a Scottish DJ and model who rose to fame on Britain’s Next Top Model, came out as bisexual to her social media followers during the pandemic.