August 27th

08-27-1961 Tom Ford (born Thomas Carlyle Ford) – Born in Austin, Texas. He is an American fashion designer and film director. He gained international fame for his saving of Gucci and the creation of the Tom Ford label. Ford also directed the Oscar-nominated film A Single Man. Ford is married to Richard Buckley, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of Vogue Hommes International. They have been together since 1986.

08-27-1885 – 1971 Lina Poletti – Born Cordula Poletti in Italy (exact place unknown). She was an Italian feminist. Poletti liked to wear men’s clothes and was described as being beautiful and rebellious. Today she is best known for her affairs with writer Sibilla Aleramo and actress Eleonora Duse. In the book, Le lesbiche nell’italia del primo Novecento (Lesbians in Italy in the Early Twentieth Century), Poletti is credited with being one of the first women in Italy to “declare her lesbianism, without regret.”

08-27-1873 – 10-07-1956 Maud Allen (Birth name Beulah Maude Durrant) – Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Allan was a pianist-turned-actress, dancer, and choreographer. She spent her early years in San Francisco, California, moving to Germany in 1895 to study piano in Berlin. In 1898 she took up dance. She designed and often sewed her own costumes. In 1906 her production Vision of Salomé opened in Vienna. Based loosely on Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé, her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils became famous and notorious. Her book My Life and Dancing was published in 1908 and that year she toured England with 250 performances. She starred in the silent film, The Rug Maker’s Daughter (1915). In 1918 she was accused of being a lesbian and an associate of German wartime conspirators. She sued for libel and lost the case. She fled London after being branded a German spy who was sleeping with the prime minister’s wife. From the 1920s on she taught dance and lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich. She died in Los Angeles, California on October 7, 1956.

08-27-1930 – 05-20-1989 Erzsébet Galgóczi – Born in Ménföcsanak (Györ), Hungary. She was a Hungarian writer, playwright, and screenwriter. Between 1950 and 1955, she attended the Budapest Theater College. In the 1970s, she lived openly as a lesbian. Her long-time partner was actress Hilda Gobbi. Her most successful work in Hungary was Vidravas, and her novella, Törvényen belül (Another Love). It was made into a 1982 film (she also wrote the screenplay) and became a cult film for lesbian audiences in Cold War Hungary and Poland. It won the Best Actress award at the 1982 Cannes film festival and was nominated for the Palme d’Or. In 1989, she died unexpectedly of a heart attack in her family home.

08-27-1959 Jeanette Winterson – Born in Manchester, England. She is an award-winning English writer. Her first book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit made her famous. At the age of 16, she knew she was a lesbian, left home, and worked her way through college. She is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Awards. In 2006, Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) “For services to literature.” In 2012, she became a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. Her 1987 novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent. From 1990 to 2002, she was involved with BBE radio broadcaster Peggy Reynolds. After their relationship ended, Winterson became involved with theatre director Deborah Warner. In 2015 she married psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue.

08-27-1964 Stephen Elliott – Born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is an Australian film director and screenwriter. Best known for The Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). Elliott came out as gay during his presentation at the inaugural AACTA Awards in Sydney on January 31, 2012.

08-27-1992 Kim Petras – Born in Cologne, Germany. She is a singer, songwriter, model, and transgender pioneer. Her parents said that from the age of two, she began insisting she was a girl. At the age of 14, Kim gained worldwide attention from the news media after she appeared in a German TV documentary and a talk show in a push to get permission for early gender reassignment surgery at age 16. According to German law, a person must be at least 18 to be allowed to undergo this kind of operation. She finally got permission and in November 2008, at the age of 16, Kim announced on her blog that she had recently completed her gender reassignment operations. The story made worldwide news in February 2009 saying that Kim may be the youngest person in the world to have had gender reassignment surgery. In an interview, she stated, “I was asked if I feel like a woman now – but the truth is I have always felt like a woman – I just ended up in the wrong body.”