The front label paint party is a visual representation of a big queer night out. The bright colours and bold type exude an energetic feel, like a group of friends ready to hit the town. It also has the advantage of not being a literal rainbow and yet still containing all the pride colours.
Like all great 2sLGBTQ events, the party doesn’t stop at the front, the back label includes a myriad of queer symbolism. A pink triangle has been a symbol for several LGBTQ+ identities. Initially, this was meant as a sign of shame, but later it was reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the insignia of the Nazi concentration camps, distinguishing the prisoners for having been identified as gay men by the authorities. In the 1970s, the symbol was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia and has since been adopted by the wider LGBTQ community as a popular symbol of LGBTQ+ pride and the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
There is also the floral pattern. The two flowers highlighted here are the green carnation and the purple violet. The green carnation became a gay symbol in 1892 when Oscar Wilde instructed a handful of his friends to wear them on their lapels at the opening night of his comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan. From then on, wearing a green carnation on your lapel was a secret, subtle hint that you were a man who loved other men. The purple violet is known as one of the longest lasting “queer” flowers, dating back to Sappho in ancient Greece. Her old poetry contains many references to flowers and nature, painting an image of an idyllic meadow where girls and women frolic, decorated with flower garlands. She mentions the colour purple or violet several times in her work.
