As a soloist and principal dancer – the highest rank within a dance company – with The Royal Ballet, Welsh ballet dancer William Bracewell has performed some of the most renowned roles in the industry. He is known for pushing his body to its physical limits – he continued dancing for several years after herniating a disc in his back. However, off stage, Bracewell prefers a gentler pace of life and spends his time making ceramics in his home studio in London or gardening in Hampshire with his partner Andy Monaghan, a florist and fellow dancer.

“Perhaps not seen as a typical style icon, Derek Jarman encapsulates industrious hardwearing workwear,” Bracewell says. “Give me a pastel-peach overall with muddy knees and rips to the cuff any day. It’s comfortable, it’s practical, but with an ease that embodies his unapologetic nature. In contrast to the styles used in his films, his personal take was very much an artist at work – clothes to create in.”

With a variety of accolades under his belt, including a Bafta for his brilliant BBC series Juice and a spot on Forbes’ “30 under 30” list for his writing on Netflix’s Sex Education, the actor and writer Mawaan Rizwan has established himself as one of the most exciting voices in British comedy. Juice, which Rizwan both writes and stars in, follows the capers of Jamma, a young gay Londoner often overwhelmed by life, through a surrealist lens.

“I’m going to go with Emma D’Arcy because I love the way they blend masculine and feminine elements to create unique and theatrical looks,” Rizwan says of his style icon. “Emma once described clothing as armour, which is something that really resonated with me. It’s a nice notion to play with because I think it exudes their energy and how they carry themselves. No matter what they wear, it feels bad ass and it’s beautiful seeing a queer person take up space in that way, with fluidity and unpredictably. And it’s often encouraged me to mix unaccepted pieces or approach fashion more adventurously. Quite early on in our lives as queer people, clothing becomes armour, and we are often using it to heal or communicate something, or express parts of ourselves that we don’t always have the ability to in words. It’s really beautiful seeing someone do that in the mainstream with such finesse and gorgeous silhouettes.”

Kingston-born, Milan-based creative director and fashion journalist Jordan Anderson is the founder of My Queer Blackness, My Black Queerness, an online platform exploring Black queer identity through creativity. When it launched in June 2020, MQBMBQ raised more than €12,000 for Black trans-centred organisations ForTheGworls and Transwave JA, through a fundraiser that featured prints by 12 artists including Campbell Addy and Tim Walker.

“I’ve never had one specific style icon,” Anderson says. “My style has always shifted, drawing bits and pieces from Black queer artists past and present – whether it’s James Baldwin and Ma Rainey or Tyler, the Creator and Colman Domingo. It’s less about the clothes themselves and more about the swagger, confidence and presence they embody. I’m inspired by how they carry themselves in a world that wasn’t built for them. That spirit, that unapologetic self-expression, is what shapes how I move through the world and express myself through style.”

As the protagonist in the BBC’s adaptation of Paris Lees’ memoir, What It Feels Like For A Girl, Ellis Howard loosely portrays the transgender writer and activist’s younger self as a queer, working-class school kid in the 2000s, while drawing on his own lived experience. “The moment I saw Ellis, I recognised something in him – a cheekiness, a delicateness, a complexity – and knew he was the one. And he rose to the challenge, again and again,” Lees has said of the Liverpool-born writer and actor.

“I didn’t find my sense of style until my twenties,” Howard says. “As a kid, I tried to disappear – plain tracksuits, safe choices, nothing that shouted. But then, I found Beth Ditto and Lena Dunham – women who own their bodies, who dress with defiance and wit. I’ve never been entirely sure what my body is supposed to be, or how I’m meant to display it, but their style gave me permission to figure it out. Now, I live for anything oversized and unapologetic. I dress to take up space and I’ve found it gives me confidence on days I wouldn’t otherwise have it.”

Now in its third year, Classical Pride is a pioneering annual festival shining a light on the breadth and diversity of LGBTQ+ artists in the classical music industry. Its creator? London-born conductor Oliver Zeffman. “We want to show that queer music isn’t only Madonna or Kylie or Charli XCX, it’s also Handel and Tchaikovsky and Ethel Smyth,” he says. This year, Zeffman will not only lead a headlining concert with the London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican in London on 27 June, but also makes his US debut, taking Classical Pride to The Hollywood Bowl in LA with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on 10 July.

“My queer style icon is actually a new friend – William Bracewell [above],” Zeffman says. “Very chic, effortlessly cool, but – as a ballet dancer – easily pulls off sportswear, which is my general state of dress. We worked together on a recent shoot with BMW and immediately hit it off. His style shows that you don’t have to be loud to be expressive, it just has to feel like you.”