WORLDPRIDE AND EUROPRIDE

InterPride was founded by Marsha H Levine and the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Pride Coordinators (USA) in 1982, and has grown into a global network of over 400 LGBTQIA+ member organisations from over 70 counties. It is the international organization that advances the Pride movement by coordinating with global partners. WorldPride is a global LGBTQIA+ festival that has been staged since 2000, with cities competing to host the event. WorldPride aims to promote and advocate for LGBTQIA+ human rights around the world. The right to host it is licensed by InterPride which has representatives from nearly every Pride organisation around the world. The first WorldPride took place in Rome in July 2000, followed by Jerusalem in 2006, London in 2012, Toronto in 2014, Madrid in 2017, New York in 2019, and Copenhagen in 2021. Host cities continue to be selected by the members of InterPride with WorldPrides usually held every two to three years. In 2019, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was successful in winning the bid to host this year’s WorldPride in Sydney, having competed against Houston, USA and Montreal, Canada. Photography courtesy Sydney WorldPride 2023.

In 1982, the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Pride Coordinators was formed in Boston, USA, with an initial membership of six USA Pride organizers. The organization was originally known as the National Association of Lesbian/Gay Pride Coordinators (NAL/GPC), before changing the name to International Association of Lesbian/Gay Pride Coordinators (IAL/GPC) in October 1985, then to International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Coordinators at the conference in West Hollywood, California, and eventually to InterPride in the late 1990s. Over time membership grew to include Pride organizers around the world and in 2021, membership totaled over 300 organizations from more than 60 countries. This growth has been matched by increasing diversity of membership. Since 2015, non-North American members have grown from 21% to 49%. This trend primarily reflects increased participation from Oceania and Global South (Africa, Asia, and South America), with Pride gaining a presence in locations where it was previously absent or underdeveloped. There has also been significant growth in structures that gather Pride organizers together at a national or international level.

At the 16th annual conference of InterPride, held in New York in October 1997, InterPride’s membership voted to establish the “WorldPride” title and awarded the inaugural WorldPride to be held in Rome in July 2000. The event was put on by the Italian gay rights group Mario Mieli along with InterPride, and 250,000 people joined in the march to the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus. It was one of the biggest crowds to gather in Rome for decades, and among the scheduled events were conferences, a fashion show, a large parade, and a concert featuring Gloria Gaynor, The Village People, RuPaul, and Geri Halliwell.

The next WorldPrides would be held in Jerusalem in2006, London in 2012, in Toronto in 2014, and in Madrid in 2017.

In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 –WorldPride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride and commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with five million people attending in Manhattan for Pride weekend alone. The event was held in conjunction with Stonewall 50, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of June 28, 1969, which occurred in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, an event widely considered to mark the start of the modern Gay Rights Movement (now more commonly referred to as the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights).

In August 2021, for the first time, WorldPride was held in two cities in two countries –Copenhagen in Denmark, and neighbouring Malmö in Sweden. This coincided with two LGBTQ anniversaries: seventy years since the world’s first successful genital reconstructive surgery in Denmark in 1951; and fifty years after Gay Liberation Front’s Danish chapter was founded in 1971. The Crown Princess of Denmark was the patron of the event, making her the first ever royal to serve as patron for a major LGBTQ event.

In October 2019 InterPride chose Sydney, Australia, to host WorldPride 2023, the first time WorldPride was to be held in the Southern Hemisphere or Asia Pacific region. Sydney WorldPride 2023 was held this February 17th to March 5th, in line with the traditional timing of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and in the heart of the Australian summer. It coincided with the 50th Anniversary of the first Australian Gay Pride Week, the 45th Anniversary of the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the 5th Anniversary of same-sex marriage in Australia. According to the bid document, the stated objective of WorldPride Sydney 2023 was to celebrate the diversity of culture and identity in the Asia Pacific region, shine an international spotlight on First Nations culture, and draw attention to LGBTIQ+ human rights abuses.

EuroPride 2023

EuroPride is a pan-European international LGBTI event featuring a Pride parade, hosted by a different European city each year. The EuroPride licence is owned by European Pride Organisers Association (EPOA), an umbrella organisation for European Pride organisers. (In comparison, WorldPride organised by InterPride, of which EPOA is a part, is an international Pride event that promotes LGBTI issues on an global level). EuroPride was first celebrated in London in 1992, attended by estimated crowds of over 100,000. Since then it has continued to grow both in number of participants and political significance, though not always at the same time. In 1997 in Paris over 300,000 people marched to the Bastille. In 2011 around one million people attended Pride festivities in Rome by the Coliseum. Some smaller-scale EuroPrides have also taken place, such as in Warsaw, Poland, where 10,000 people braved the streets of still conservative ex-communist country to hold an important political demonstration that proved to be a turning point for LGBT rights in Poland. In 2015, EuroPride took place in Riga, Latvia, the first time in a former Soviet country, and in 2022 it took place in Belgrade, Serbia, the first time in south-eastern Europe. This year EuroPride 2023 will take place September 7-17 in Malta. In October 2020 three bids went forward to a EPOA vote at the Annual General Meeting and Malta Pride won the bid with 54% of the votes, versus Belfast Pride 29% and Rotterdam Pride 18%. “Having anti-discrimination laws introduced in the Maltese Constitution in 2014 was unquestionably one high point in the development of equality for the LGBTIQ+ Community in Malta. But many more changes have been achieved and it’s no surprise that since October 2015, ILGA-Europe ranked Malta first place in its annual review of the human rights situation of LGBTIQ+ people in Europe since 2016”, wrote Malta Pride in the EuroPride 2023 application and bid book. “According to the 10th ILGA-Europe benchmark, Rainbow Europe 2020, Malta by far offers the best situation to its LGBTIQ+ Community with regards to human rights and full equality when compared to other European countries where ‘decline is indeed clearly noticeable’, Malta has ranked first since 2016. For sure, it has been a long journey... Malta became independent in 1964, but it still took until 1973 before the Government decriminalised male homosexuality and harmonised age of consent... Since then, several important milestones were reached that brought Malta’s LGBTIQ+ rights up to the highest standards.”

CHANEL MAKEUP

THE SPRING-SUMMER 2023 COLLECTION