Spotlight

“OK, IT’S TIME FOR THE FUR COAT NOW! YES!!” Regina Fong welcomes Zsarday Forde onto the stage at the Black Cap pub (mid-1960s–2015) on Camden High Street in the late 1980s.

This full-length, leopard-print faux fur coat belonged to the legendary Black, queer, trans, working-class and HIV-positive performer Zsarday Forde (1969–2009), also known as Skinny Bitch. Despite a dynamic stage and modelling career that included walking for London fashion legends Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, she lived a precarious life that tragically ended on her 40th birthday weekend in 2009.

The coat was saved by her devoted friend and cabaret artist Mzz Kimberley, who also donated the first dress she ever wore: a cheeky little number in red cotton — sleeveless, above the knee and lovingly embellished with scores of colourful buttons hand-sewn across the bust.

In 2016, at Duckie’s infamous annual Gay Shame party, Travis Alabanza restaged Zsarday’s performance move-for-move, reconstructed from video by the extraordinary writer-performer Nando Messias, as a tribute to the legacy Zsarday left on London’s queer scene.

The same year, Travis donated a dress to the Museum of Transology collection. Their little black number “…wasn’t the first dress that I ever wore, but it was the first dress that I put on and thought… oh my god, I look good. I look like… me. I truly felt, if possible, like my gender.”

In 2024, Nando Messias donated hundreds of objects from her costume archive to the Museum of Transology. The first dress she wore in the Sissy series— sophisticated and elegant in pale blue silk— is photographed here on display, alongside footage of the performance, at the Transcestry exhibition.

The interconnectedness of these four rare pieces of Black trans femme fashion illustrates the way members of London’s QTIBIPoC community have proactively and lovingly archived their own memories, each other’s and their community’s, despite these histories rarely being preserved in UK museum collections.

Black transcestry exists beyond the colonial museum project.

Zsarday — you are not forgotten.

Through this collection we celebrate your rightful place in transcestry today, tomorrow and forever more.