The legacy of glam rock: Queer fashion, media and urban subcultural dynamics

This article explores glam rock fashion of the 1970s as a transformative force in the expression and visibility of queer identities within urban media landscapes. Glam rock emerged during a period of cultural upheaval and experimentation. Glam rock operated not only as a musical genre but also as a visual and performative phenomenon that redefined the aesthetics of gender and sexuality. Through the flamboyant, androgynous costumes, stylized personas and theatrical stagecraft of artists such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and Roxy Music, glam rock destabilized dominant heteronormative conventions and offered a radical reimagining of identity and self-presentation. These artists cultivated personas that blurred the boundaries between masculine and feminine, real and performative, thereby offering new modes of queer expression and identification. This article situates glam rock within broader frameworks of fashion theory, queer studies and media analysis to argue that its fashion was far more than a surface-level style; it was a political and cultural intervention. The aesthetics of glam rock functioned as a medium through which artists and audiences could perform resistance, articulate fluid identities and claim space in mainstream media environments often hostile to queer visibility. In doing so, glam rock contributed to a growing repertoire of queer cultural strategies, helping to legitimize and amplify non-normative gender expressions in public discourse. By closely analysing iconic media appearances, album artwork, fashion editorials and televised performances, this study highlights how glam rock’s visual culture redefined the relationship between fashion and identity. It also traces glam rock’s enduring legacy in shaping contemporary queer aesthetics seen today in gender-fluid fashion collections and performative social media personas. At its core, this article contends that glam rock fashion was not only pivotal in its own era, but it also remains a foundational influence on the evolution of queer style, performance and media representation in the twenty-first century.