Nobody knows for sure who threw the first punch at the Stonewall Uprising in New York City in 1969. But it’s widely believed that it could have been Stormé DeLarverie, a lifelong gay rights activist and drag performer, who died in 2014. Prior to her participation in Stonewall, DeLarverie was a groundbreaking drag performer whose publicity photographs show a dandyish approach to zoot suits and black tie. Gender-fluid dressing has become a major force in fashion over the past few seasons, but DeLarverie’s approach to style is an early, striking instance of it. (In our drag king roundtable, New York artist Merlot pays homage to DeLarverie.)

Stormé DeLarverie

“Nobody knows who threw the first punch, but it’s rumored that she did, and she said she did,” her friend Lisa Cannistraci, a legal guardian and owner of a Village lesbian bar, told The New York Times upon her death in 2014. “She told me she did.”

Stormé DeLarverie

DeLarverie, who was born in New Orleans in 1920 to a black mother and a white father, spent the ’50s and ’60s as the only “male impersonator” in the Jewel Box Revue, the period’s only racially integrated drag troupe: “There were around 25 guys and me,” she told AfterEllen.com in a 2010 interview. Several photographs show DeLarverie with her castmates, channeling the male crooners of that era: in a shawl collar tuxedo, flanked by three female impersonators in glittery gowns; in head shots, straightening her French cuffs and an impressive set of cufflinks. In another, she wears a modestly cut zoot suit and holds a pipe, a fedora cocked on her head. Prior to her time with the Jewel Box, she’s said to have worked in Chicago as a bodyguard to mobsters, and one wonders if she picked up (or offered) some style tips.