LGBT History Month: Sylvester

Happy LGBT History Month! 🏳️‍🌈

We are celebrating pioneering gender non-conforming artist Sylvester whose track ‘Stars’ was re-envisioned by fellow LGBTQ+ trailblazer and creative polymath Honey Dijon for our Labels Are For Bottles Campaign for Smirnoff.

Sylvester was pioneering queer artist with a distinctive falsetto voice most well-known for disco/ Hi NRG stompers such as ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ and ‘Do Ya Wanna Funk’ in the late 70s and early 80s. Genderqueer before the term even existed and one of the first artists to be openly gender fluid, Sylvester was a singular talent whose impact and influence can be traced across music continuously and whose life was devastatingly cut short by AIDS in 1988.

Labels Are For Bottles was part of We’re Open, Smirnoff’s campaign to make nightlife a safer and more inclusive place for LGBTQ+ people. Honey Dijon’s creative vision for the soundtrack in her update of Sylvester’s classic brought LGBT nightlife history to the fore whilst having an eye clearly on the future. She also starred in the ad and insisted on a deeper layer of community support which became a long term Smirnoff partnership with LGBT Foundation.

Check Honey’s cover of Stars above and head to the link in the bio for a playlist of some of Sylvester’s iconic best.

#LGBTHistoryMonth #Sylvester #Disco #HoneyDijon #LabelsAreForBottles #SmirnoffEU #WeAreOpen