Dressing Dykes: Natalie Barney, a Lesbian Style Icon
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I’m constantly searching for lesbian style icons: A shining light among them, no matter how hard I look elsewhere, is Natalie Barney. Natalie was many things - an heiress, salonist and writer, an American in Paris and a socialite, a proud lesbian and a non-monogamist. She was rich, rich, rich, and her social and financial position offered her freedoms that most women couldn’t even imagine. She could declare, in the early 20th century, that “I am a lesbian. One need not hide it nor boast of it, though being other than normal is a perilous advantage.” She lived until the age of 95, dying in 1972. She lived her life sensationally.
Natalie was constantly and loudly lesbian. In the words of her biographer, Diana Souhami, “Natalie went where desire led her. She shared her bed, the train couchette, her polar bear rug, the riverbank or wooded glade with many women, and not always one at a time.” Though she had multitudes of lovers, some were more important to her than others. Her most notable relationships include those with poet Renée Vivien, courtesan and writer Liane de Pougy, Duchess turned writer and socialist Élisabeth (Lily) de Gramont, and painter Romaine Brooks. These women helped shape Natalie’s image; for example, Liane de Pougy wrote Idylle Saphique in 1901, which tells the story of the lesbian love between a French courtesan and a young American woman, Flossie. It was well known that Flossie was based on Natalie. Natalie was also pictured by or with her lovers - Romaine Brooks painted her portrait in 1920, while around 1900 Natalie and Renée posed together for photographs to represent their relationship.
Aside from her lovers and her money, Natalie stands out for her femininity. In lesbian fashion history, it’s rare to find unashamed, obvious queer women who dressed in a feminine-leaning way. Masculine lesbians and butches of all kinds are vital within queer history, but they’re also often the only history available when it comes to lesbian fashion. Masculine women stand out in historical photographs, paintings or records, which flags that they are there. Being in fashion - or in other words, being fashionably feminine - meant that queerness was less obvious, and is harder to find now when we look back searching for it. Natalie Barney is different in that her femininity and her style went hand-in-hand with her lesbianism, and she could afford to yell it from the rooftops.
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Natalie’s femininity was frivolous, ostentatious, and woman-focused. At her literary salons - weekly gatherings of those in her circle and outside of it, including her friends and lovers as well as influential and upcoming writers - guests were encouraged to be who they really were. This included their use of clothing (or their lack of it). Sometimes, as with the more masculine of her lovers like Romaine Brooks, guests would come dressed in dark colours, completing their outfits with hats and monocles. Natalie, always fiercely herself, expressed herself with every inch of skin that she covered or showed.
Diana Souhami describes the sort of things Natalie wore to her salons: “Natalie liked her blonde hair long or up and wore jewels, furs and fripperies, high collars and high boots, fancy dress or nothing at all, according to the occasion or her mood.” She was luxurious, which was only fitting for the host of such well-renowned parties. She almost was the party, with her furs and fripperies complementing the red damask wallpaper of her dining room, or the nymph-covered domed ceiling, or the portraits of her lovers (often painted by her mother, Alice Pike Barney, or by Romaine) that lined the walls.
Natalie was creating a space. She’s often known as the “queen of Paris-Lesbos,” and this is because she wanted the spirit of Lesbos to be reborn at the doors of her Paris. Lesbos - the Greek island - was and is still very much in existence, but it was not the physical place that Natalie craved, but its mythic history. Lesbos was the home of ancient poet Sappho, whose writings are some of the earliest own-voice evidence of love between women, and whose name and home are the root of the words “lesbian” and “sapphic.” She was adored by Natalie and her circle, an absent leader, with Natalie her right-hand woman.
Before setting up the literary salon at 20 rue Jacob in Paris, Natalie lived just outside the city, in Neuilly. It was at this point, in the first decade of the 20th century, that Sappho was most influential to Natalie. Sapphism was her way of life, and she honoured this through gatherings and parties, as well as “living pictures” that were staged in homage to Sappho. Natalie’s image was entwined with Sappho. At one of these gatherings, captured in a photograph, Natalie’s friends and lovers danced around her, all dressed in togas or replicas of Ancient Greek chitons. Other times, dressed the same, they gathered around an incense-burning altar, afterwards engaging in acts of love with one another - all right there in Natalie Barney’s garden. If Lesbos was reborn in Paris, it was birthed by determination and adoration. The Sapphic look, recreated on the bodies of these Americans and Parisians, was a visual manifesto of lesbian life.
Natalie Barney was privileged, undoubtedly so. She cared about women, but kept within affluent, creative communities. She wasn’t an activist, and she didn’t make the lives of working class lesbians any better, despite her own lesbianism being the primary focus of her life. But she was there, and we still know it. She’s an example of extravagance, a pioneer of lesbian imagery and a lesbian style icon. She is not - as no one person is - representative of the whole picture, but her life is a beautiful part of it.
Words: Eleanor Medhurst | Images: Filipa Namorado
