Tulsa queer curators revive forgotten fashion from local pride archives

In the back room of a converted warehouse on Tulsa’s East 11th Street, the hum of an old industrial fan barely cuts the smell of cedar and aged polyester. Elena Soto lifts a sequined vest from a cardboard box dated 1987, the tiny mirrors catching the single overhead bulb and throwing flecks of light across her forearms. The fabric still holds a faint trace of cigarette smoke and hairspray. She runs her thumb along the uneven stitches where someone once added a hand-painted lambda symbol that has since faded to a soft gray. Outside, traffic on the highway drones, but inside the climate-controlled vault the only sound is the soft rustle of tissue paper as Soto folds the garment back into its acid-free sleeve. Oklahoma’s political climate has long treated visible queer history as optional or inconvenient, yet the clothing left behind refuses to disappear quietly. These pieces document moments when people in Tulsa decided to appear in public anyway—on courthouse steps, in bar parking lots, at the old Mayfest grounds—knowing the risk. Preserving the actual garments rather than just photographs keeps the scale of those decisions tangible: the weight of a leather jacket lined with band patches, the way a pair of wide-leg trousers was altered mid-decade to accommodate a new silhouette. Younger queers in the state often inherit fragmented stories because institutions have not prioritized the material record. When the clothes survive, they offer a direct counter to the claim that nothing worth remembering happened here. The labor of cleaning, documenting, and remounting each item becomes its own argument that these lives were never side notes. The Pride Vault sits two blocks south of the old Tulsa Union Depot, inside a brick building that once stored freight manifests. Soto, thirty-four and raised in nearby Broken Arrow, began volunteering there in 2019 after stumbling across a box of parade sashes while helping a friend clear out a deceased relative’s storage unit. By last spring she had convinced the board to fund a small exhibition titled “Cut and Altered.” One standout piece is a white jumpsuit worn by a local drag performer named Miss Kitty in the 1993 Pride march; the original owner had sewn hidden pockets into the side seams to carry flyers for a now-defunct helpline. During a recent walkthrough, Soto pointed to the faded hem and noted the hand-inked phone number still legible under magnification. “People used whatever they had,” she said, “and they made it work twice.” Funding arrived late and only after the city council questioned whether the project qualified as “heritage tourism.” A competing proposal for a Route 66 memorabilia show received quicker approval and twice the budget. At the same time, two board members pushed to limit the exhibition to garments created before 2000, citing concerns about “contemporary relevance.” Soto kept the post-2000 pieces in storage but photographed them anyway, posting the images on a private account where local makers now trade sewing patterns adapted from the older items. The friction has slowed the public opening by four months and forced the team to rely on volunteer labor for the final mounts. Still, the compromise preserved access to the full collection for anyone willing to schedule an appointment rather than erasing the later decades outright. The exhibition opens October 12 at the Tulsa Arts District pop-up space on South Boston Avenue, with free entry from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday through December. Visitors can request a guided handling session on Saturday mornings; slots fill quickly and cost five dollars to cover glove and light rental. Those who want to contribute should contact the Pride Vault directly at their listed email to schedule an oral-history recording or to donate garments still in private hands. Follow Soto’s public account under the handle @eastsidealterations for weekly posts that include close-up repair details and occasional pattern giveaways. The sequined vest now hangs on a padded hanger under glass, its mirrors dulled by time yet still capable of throwing a single sharp point of light across the floor when the afternoon sun hits the case at the right angle. A denim jacket from the 1986 march rests on the next rack, its elbows reinforced with iron-on patches that once spelled out "Tulsa Lesbians" in block letters cut from a discarded billboard. Marcus Hale, who donated the piece last year after clearing his uncle’s attic in the Kendall-Whittier neighborhood, recalled how the original owner had lengthened the sleeves with fabric from a pair of surplus army trousers to fit over winter layers during the cold walk down Peoria Avenue. The cuffs still carry faint creases from those repeated folds. Such adaptations speak to a local fashion language shaped by limited resources and the need to signal without drawing unwanted attention from passersby or police. Hale now teaches a monthly mending workshop at the East Tulsa Community Center, where participants replicate the same patch techniques on contemporary pieces using patterns Soto shares from the vault’s files. The sessions draw both longtime residents and newcomers who treat the older garments as templates rather than relics. One recent participant brought a thrifted blazer and added a hidden interior label quoting a 1994 helpline number, mirroring the construction details preserved in the jumpsuit. These quiet repetitions keep the material record active rather than sealed away.