Fashion can be political, especially for gay and transgender people, and that reality was part of the inspiration behind queer style expert Anita Dolce Vita’s first book.

Vita, founder of the queer fashion site dapperQ and author of “dapperQ Style: Ungendering Fashion,” said that as she was interviewing LGBTQ people about style, the narrative that fashion is a tool for political resistance “kept growing stronger and stronger as the far right continues to attack our identities and tries to erase us.

“To me, this book was really important, not only as a celebration of our identities but as an important political conversation that needs to be had right now,” she said.

It’s 2023, but Vita said the country is returning to the 1940s. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, police reportedly used an informal “three-article rule” to arrest people for cross-dressing if they weren’t wearing three pieces of attire that aligned with their assigned sex at birth. LGBTQ elders have since told researchers they were arrested in bar raids under that rule.