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Everyone is so over corporate Pride and rainbow capsule collections that come out every June. Especially when the fashion industry is held up, invented, and reinvented by queer people. As queer and trans visibility is higher than ever, so are the aesthetics, and queer fashion designers are shining more than ever before.
Gender is, for many people, a constant work in progress, but that doesn’t mean the road to self-discovery has to be one of suffering. We can and do look good! Yes, plenty of mass retailers churn out rainbow-tinted Pride gear for the month of June, but there are plenty of smaller, queer-owned brands putting the work in to create collections that people actually want to wear. (And if they don’t want to yet, they will in a few seasons when the look is everywhere.)
Freedman has a piece of advice for the fashion brands that have additional work to do when it comes to fostering queer wellness and identity.”Listen to queer consumers and hire queer employees! And create products and services that the community is missing,” Freedman says.
The 7 brands featured below do just that, featuring a great mix of dressy and casual, sexy and chill. Ignore those tired “men’s” and “women’s section” labels when you head to the store. It’s time to wear whatever makes you feel like you.
Vivienne Westwood is for the punks. She’s a dame, an Aries, and the person responsible for bringing punk to the modern age. Everyone knows the brand right now for the little Saturn pendant and pearl necklaces.
Abacaxi is a New York-based brand that specializes in textile art, dyes, and weaving. The founder and creative director, Sheena Sood, often uses natural dyes and finds inspiration for her collections in animals and nature.
Automic Gold is a fine jewelry brand founded by AL Sandimirova. Their goal is to remove the gendered categories on jewelry. Of course all jewelry is for everyone, but the retail experience is often split into “men’s jewelry” and “women’s jewelry.” Automic Gold makes pieces and markets them for everyone.
Willy Chavarria is a Mexican American designer whose work amplifies Americana heritage from the point of view of the Mexican diaspora. His work shows a lot of cowboy motifs, American southern workwear, and his take on Sunday bests.
Nobody understands color like Cristopher John Rogers. The designer was a CFDA sweetheart and very quickly became one of the faces of fashion’s new guard. His dresses have appeared on celebrities and TV shows. And his hallmark isn’t just color—but also shape, shadow, and texture.
Victor Barragán started his eponymous label in 2010 in one of the burgeoning design capitals in the world, Mexico City. Nearly a decade later, in 2019, he was a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award nominee. Now, the work at BARRAGÁN is a celebration of Mexican Americana heritage, as Victor Barragán sees it, but it’s not necessarily in the way you think. His work touches on cyberpunk and the influence of whiteness, rather than the rejection of it, not necessarily in celebration, but at least in acknowledgement. There’s a dirtiness to his look that’s sexy.
Theophilio is a contemporary ready-to-wear brand from the creative mind of Jamaican-American designer Edvin Thompson. He launched the brand in 2016, and his work is a creative homage to Jamaican dancehall culture and New York nightlife.
