Five-Stripe Sunset Lesbian Flag

Overview

To reduce the seven-band design to a form that survives manufacture and small reproduction, in the designer's own terms "better for IRL products". ^[3]

The Tumblr blog official-lesbian-flag was set up to end what it called "too-many-flags syndrome", describing itself as "an attempt at collecting them all and making a larger, group decision" and asking that the search not "stay confined on tumblr". Its terms were explicit: "Only lesbians contribute, please, but accessibility suggestions are welcome from anyone. Trans and nb lesbians welcome." ^[3] By late July 2018 Emily Gwen's seven-band design was the front-runner, and the blog noted it had also won two independent polls, one with more than 3,000 responses and one with more than 2,000. ^[3]

On 25 July 2018 taqwomen posted the simplification, framed as a question rather than a proposal: "Has someone done this? I think the [top lesbian flag] is good for aesthetics and online, but the bottom two I put here would be better for IRL products." ^[3] The post carried two reduced versions, one of five bands and one of three. ^[3][5] The blog replied the same day, "I was attempting to do a similar thing!!! I love the second version!!! tysm", clarifying "by 'second version' i mean the one with 5 stripes". ^[3]

The seven-band format had a practical problem the whole exchange turns on: adjacent bands of similar hue are hard to tell apart at small sizes and hard for flag makers to sew, and sourcing several shades of one colour in thread and fabric is expensive. ^[3]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

lesbian

Creators

The Creator

Attribution notes

taqwomen posted the five-band simplification on 25 July 2018, and the blog running the search for a community lesbian flag adopted it within the week. ^[3] The same person has posted under the handles taqwomen, ShimmeringAtoms and purrfectbycath, and gives her first name as Catherine on the current blog. ^[5] Wikimedia Commons records the artist of the 25 July file as "Taqwomen/ShimmeringAtoms". ^[2]

Origin

Place Type

online

Digital Origin

Tumblr (posted into the official-lesbian-flag search)

Digital origin; no verified physical location.

Digital origin. Posted on Tumblr into the search the official-lesbian-flag blog was running for a community lesbian flag. ^[3]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2018

Exact date

July 25, 2018

Earliest located publication

July 25, 2018

Period in Use

2018–present

Adoption ran in distinct steps that are easy to collapse into one. The proposal was posted on 25 July 2018. ^[3][2] The official-lesbian-flag blog stated a preference the same day and made the switch public on 31 July: "update: @taqwomen made a wonderful, simplified flag out of this, bringing it down to 5 stripes that makes it easier to replicate... personally, i find this to be the winner and what i'm going to be using from now on." Asked the same day whether the five-band version should be the official one, the blog answered, "yeAh honestly i'm suuper up for the 5 stripes one. i'm gonna be using that from now on." ^[3] That is a blog stating what it would use, not an institution conferring a status, and its name does not make it one.

Wider circulation followed. The design appears in HRC and GLAAD guides, on Apple's lesbian flag emoji, on Nike and Converse merchandise and at Pride events internationally, and Wikipedia records that as of 2026 it is the most commonly used lesbian flag. ^[1][6] Its visual simplicity is much of the reason: fewer bands survive embroidery, nail art, avatars and sewn flags.

The five-band design's relationship to its seven-band parent follows a pattern seen elsewhere. The seven-stripe gay men's flag simplified to five, and the 1978 rainbow flag was reduced from eight stripes to six for practical reasons; in each case the simplified version overtook the original in circulation. ^[1]

The flag also inherits the authorship question surrounding its seven-band parent, specifically the 2017 design by shapeshifter-of-constellation. The simplification itself is unambiguously taqwomen's. ^[1][7]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Sunset Lesbian Flag

Related flags

Butch Lesbian Pride Flag (2016, dorian--rutherford), Chicago Lesbian Pride, Lipstick Lesbian Flag, Sapphic Flag, Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Sibling flags

Lesbian Lesboy Ally Flag, Lesbian Mspec Lesbian Ally Flag

A direct edit of Emily Gwen's seven-band design, removing the second and sixth bands. ^[1][3] That is the only documented design relationship this flag has.

The earlier orange and pink lesbian flags reach it through that parent rather than directly: no source records taqwomen working from the pink lesbian flag, the butchspace butch flag or the 2017 shapeshifter design, and the full ancestry is set out on the parent entry. The Chicago Lesbian Pride flag sold by PrideFlags.com uses a closely similar palette, but its seller names no design source, so it is recorded as related rather than as a child.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 5 records across 4 generations.

Ancestors -3

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

Ancestors -2

Pink Lesbian Flag, Butch Lesbian Flag (Butchspace, 2017)

Ancestor

Sunset Lesbian Flag

This record

Five-Stripe Sunset Lesbian Flag

Colors & Symbolism

Two different meaning systems circulate for the five bands, and neither was published by taqwomen, whose own post is about manufacture rather than symbolism. ^[3] The first is inherited: the five retained bands keep the meanings Emily Gwen gave the corresponding bands of the seven-band design, since the edit removed the second and sixth. ^[1][8] The second is a separate later set attributed to the Tumblr user birdblinder.

Measured from the 1,094 by 660 source artwork. ^[2]

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

The inherited reading above follows from the edit itself: taqwomen removed the second and sixth bands of the seven-band flag, so independence and love and sex are the two meanings that drop out, and the remaining five keep their positions. ^[1][8] Emily Gwen wrote those meanings for her own design and has not restated them for this one.

A second and different set also circulates, attributed to the Tumblr user birdblinder: transgressive womanhood, community, gender nonconformity, freedom, and love, read from the top band down. It is not taqwomen's and not Emily Gwen's, and it reassigns bands rather than inheriting them, putting gender nonconformity at the white centre instead of the top. The post it comes from has not been located in a form that can be examined, so the attribution is recorded without a citation and neither system is presented as the flag's standard.

The designer published no hex values. The five above are measured from the 1,094 by 660 pixel PNG held on Wikimedia Commons as the 25 July 2018 artwork, whose Commons artist field reads "Taqwomen/ShimmeringAtoms". ^[2]

The 900 by 600 vector held on Commons is a later redraw by Thespoondragon, dated there to 17 March 2019, and its own file draws a different set: #d42c00, #fd9855, #ffffff, #d161a2 and #a20161, one or two units below each of the values above. ^[4] The two sets are recorded separately because they belong to different files, and the raw values of the vector are given as the file itself carries them.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

An editorial standardised production ratio. No proportion has been published by the designer. The source artwork is 1,094 by 660 pixels (547:330, a width to height of 1.658) and the later vector is 900 by 600 (3:2); neither is 3:5. ^[2][4]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

5

Layout

horizontal_stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Dark Orange, Light Orange, White, Pink, Dark Rose

Five horizontal bands of equal depth. The 1,094 by 660 source artwork divides into five bands of exactly 132 rows each. ^[2] The later 900 by 600 vector uses a viewBox of 7.5 by 5 with five bands of one unit. ^[4]

Five equal horizontal bands: dark orange, light orange, white, pink, dark rose. ^[2]

Five horizontal bands of equal depth running dark orange, light orange, white, pink and dark rose from top to bottom. ^[2] It is Emily Gwen's seven-band design with the second and sixth bands removed. ^[1]

Usage & Adoption

Geographic Usage

International circulation

Online Usage

The five-band design is the form most commonly reproduced online and in reference guides. ^[1]

Current Status

widely used

The most commonly used lesbian flag in current general circulation, by Wikipedia's account as of 2026. ^[1] Circulation is documented in reference guides, in commercial manufacture and in platform emoji; adoption by any body that could confer a formal status is not. ^[1][6]

Image Archive

Source-era artwork (2018)

The flag in use

Discourse & Debates

• Whether the five-band version adequately represents the range of lesbian identity, given that it drops the seven-band design's bands for independence and love and sex. ^[1]
• Whether the white centre band, read as unique relationships to womanhood, includes nonbinary lesbians, or whether invoking womanhood is itself exclusionary toward nonbinary people who use the lesbian label. ^[7]
• Whether the simplification lost meaningful symbolism or improved practical usability for merchandise, social media and sewn flags.
• Whether any of this made the flag official. The blog that ran the search said it was choosing what to mass-produce before Pride season, and its own adoption post is worded as a personal switch: "personally, i find this to be the winner and what i'm going to be using from now on." ^[3]

Common misidentifications

• Almost universally called 'the lesbian flag' without attribution, which creates ambiguity with the labrys, lipstick and other historical lesbian flags.
• Sometimes described as Emily Gwen's flag. Gwen designed the seven-band original; the five-band simplification is a separate design act by taqwomen. ^[1]
• The two meaning sets that circulate for its bands are sometimes presented as one creator-authored standard. Neither was published by taqwomen.

Criticisms

• The flag inherits the authorship questions surrounding its seven-stripe parent, specifically, whether Emily Gwen's design was independently invented or adapted from shapeshifter-of-constellation's 2017 precursor. Some community members argue that using the flag endorses an unresolved provenance chain; others argue that the flag's meaning now belongs to the community regardless of its exact origin story. ^[7]
• Some older lesbians feel that the rapid displacement of all previous lesbian flags (labrys, pink triangle, lipstick) by the orange-pink design erases decades of visual history. The counterargument is that the earlier symbols carried exclusionary associations (the labrys with separatist politics, the lipstick flag with its creator's documented bigotry) that the community chose to move past. ^[6]

The flag is variously called the 'sunset lesbian flag,' 'community lesbian flag,' 'orange-pink lesbian flag,' or simply 'the lesbian flag.' Each name carries slightly different implications: 'sunset' evokes the warm palette, 'community' emphasizes that it emerged from a collective selection process rather than a single designer's vision, and 'the lesbian flag' treats it as settled, a status that the unresolved authorship questions complicate. ^[6]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

Five-band simplification by taqwomen, 25 July 2018

• Credit: Artist field "Taqwomen/ShimmeringAtoms"; uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Evedawn99, June 2019Rights Tagged CC0 on Commons by the uploader. That tag covers that file as uploaded; the design's rights are unknown. ^[2]
• Credit: feral-critter, via TumblrRights Undetermined. No licence is stated by the photographer and none has been sought.
• Credit: Encycloflaggia, drawn from the source artworkRights Reconstruction by this archive; the design's rights are unknown. ^[2]
• The five-band artwork as preserved on Wikimedia Commons under the date of taqwomen's post, 1,094 by 660 pixels with five bands of exactly 132 rows. The colour values in this entry are measured from it. ^[2] · Credit: Artist field "Taqwomen/ShimmeringAtoms"; uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Evedawn99 · Wikimedia Commons
• Pride flags rendered in rock and mineral specimens in a museum display case, each flag laid out beside the stones its colours were taken from. This case shows the asexual flag and the five-band lesbian flag. The museum and the dates the display ran are not identified. If you can name them, contribute. · Credit: feral-critter, via Tumblr · feral-critter on Tumblr