*Tyson Beckett is Stuff's style reporter, and a lesbian.

OPINION: "You'll be fine, you just need lots of glitter," an incredibly well-meaning peer says when I mention I've been fretting over what to pack for an upcoming queer press trip to Sydney WorldPride.

Without meaning to, they've struck the very core of my apprehension. Will I feel welcome at the world's biggest and brightest rainbow party if I don't own a single piece of rainbow clothing? If there's no mesh in my wardrobe?

Damien Woolnough, the style editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, surmised some of my fears as a more retiring queer when he wrote that, "World Pride gives me severe FOGOAG (Fear Of Going Out And Glitter)."

A week or so later, a couple of days into the trip, one of the other tour members asks me, a little gingerly, how I identify. I'm a little taken aback, because we'd spoken about respective dating lives at dinner the night before.

“You spoke quite generally,” they point out when I bring up our previous conversation. A clumsy retort falls from my mouth faster than I can catch it: “Yes, but I was wearing a pantsuit!”

A penchant for pantsuits is a curved cliché equally as lazy as an assumption that each attendee wants to be wrapped in rainbows, but it's true that queer people often ascribe deeper meaning to our clothing choices. We lean on our clothes to convey who we are to the world, in ways both clear and coded.

I might not be hanging a handkerchief from my back pocket, but I'd incorrectly assumed that my cropped singlet and oversized blazer pairing was as overt as a manicure that features two short nails. Was I slipping under the radar because I didn't also have a sleeve of fine-line floral tattoos and a nose or signet ring? If I did wear a rainbow heart on my sleeve, or a badge on my chest, would I avoid that awkward moment in the hairdresser's chair where I'm asked, "So, do you have a boyfriend?"

Such sartorial signalling has perhaps been inadvertently complicated by fashion's increasingly non-gendered scope. As Harper's Bazaar identified last March: "Outfits that were once the domain of queer women have been popularised on red carpets and in street fashion."

Sweater vests, Teva sandals and menswear influenced suiting, all once squarely the wardrobe of queer identifying women, have gone mainstream. This broadening dress sense runs parallel to the reduced stigma in wider society, even though real prejudice exists in small pockets.

On my return to Aotearoa, I'm struck by the similarities in dress between the revellers in Sydney and the crowd at Harry Styles' Auckland concert. Cowboy boots, feather boas, colourful lensed glasses and rhinestones are fixtures in both sets. I'm reminded of course, of the continual discourse that surrounds Styles’ public dress sense, and accusations that he is, through his sequined jumpsuits, queerbaiting his audience.

At an event where William Yang retold Sydney's gay history through the lens of his own photographic archive, the artist likened the young, toned, gay men of Sydney to a rare and exotic flowers. The type that spends most of the year physically building towards an apex (Mardi Gras), but only blooms for one night. It strikes me (with relief) that such prescriptive physicality is much less of a fixture in the lives of queer women.

Also to my relief, the realisation that my aversion to rainbow attire is not an issue once in our 12 day, WorldPride itinerary. In fact the most dictatorial the dress code gets is a repeated "no jandals" note next to most events.

I try to channel this "anything goes" energy as I pick out my outfit choice to watch Kylie Minogue at WorldPride's opening concert. I settle on a bright pink babydoll dress and joke on Instagram that I've gone "full femme for Kylie." It's only later that I realise, with humour, that my version of full-femme of course is accessorised with chunky Dr Marten sandals.

The day before Mardi Gras, ABC host Nate Byrne interviews Pride activist Robyn Kennedy, who marched in what is considered Sydney's first Mardi Gras in 1978. Talking about how much of a colour spectacle the parade is in its current form, Byrne asks Kennedy whether the early days were as glam.

It elicits a wry laugh from Kennedy who admits that no, in fact on the evening of that first Mardi Gras, she was wearing “a duffle coat”.

I am the only women in our tight-knight group of Kiwi media and I can't help but notice that as inclusive and joyful every event we attend, women attendants are the minority. Could my incongruous dressing be less of an issue because I'm already in the 'other' camp?

Interestingly the event I feel most out of place is at Ultra Violet, the party for LGBTQIA+ women and allies. In a sea of people 'like me', I'm clearly overdressed in a Twenty-seven Names blazer and mini dress I'd purchased from my favourite vintage seller of Instagram. My chest is adorned with tassels from the 1960s instead of a leather harness or a baby tee.

I'm also hyper aware that not being outwardly queer presenting is a privilege. I'm not exposed to the harsh and often vitriolic judgement that gets levelled loudly and public at fellow community members every day, because of their very existence in society.

Marching over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, surrounded by bold, ebullient rainbow clad marchers, I'm reminded that the whole point of the bright display is to unashamedly make visible aspects of our identities that for years had to be kept invisible. Is it internalised homophobia that means I pulled on a plain white T-shirt and black linen shorts when I woke up that morning?

With emboldened displays of hateful language and actions towards our community getting a lot of oxygen at the moment, is it not my job to proudly don rainbow attire to show solidarity to drag performers simply trying to entertain and educate our rangatahi, and trans people simply being who they are?

This weekend my community will take to the streets in solidarity with our trans whanau. I’ll be there with rainbows on.

The writer was hosted at Sydney WorldPride by Destination NSW.