This is Connecting the Dots, a series in which writer José Criales-Unzueta looks at how fashion, pop culture, the internet and society are all interconnected.
“It’s giving charcuterie”, reads a wooden cutting board found in Target’s annual Pride shop, merchandised alongside rainbow paraphernalia and a few “equality” slogan tees. When we start etching lingo that originated from ballroom culture onto cutting boards, one must wonder: who is this for?
Pride merch has evolved from small displays of allyship, often tied to charity, to a rainbow explosion without a clear reason for existing — that sometimes goes too far. In 2022, food delivery app Postmates released a “bottom-friendly” menu. Listerine, Axe, Vaseline and more have merchandised their products in rainbow packaging for the month of June. Skittles twisted itself into knots when it made all of the candy inside its bags white — then grey — because “there’s only one rainbow” during Pride.
It’s pandering, and without any promise from those companies profiting off of Pride merch to actually protect the most vulnerable in the face of threats to LGBTQ+ rights.
It’s become clear that corporations aren’t the best allies, even as they insist on showing up at Pride everywhere. Is it possible that we’ve grown past LGBTQ+ Pride merch?
The short answer is no, says Willie Norris, the ‘if you know, you know’ New York designer who found fame through her “Promote Homosexuality” slogan tees. “To be 100 per cent honest, we’ve become a bit snobbish when it comes to Pride,” she says. “We think that we are post-Pride, post-signalling, post-rainbow, and in a way, we are, but it’s incredibly short-sighted to think that our reality is indicative in any way to where the world at large is at. We are so fortunate, and have worked to cultivate friends and a community around us who understand us, but we also live in New York, we have an incredible amount of privilege in that sense.”
The idea, after all, that anybody could be past Pride, equates to society altogether having reached a state past discrimination and beyond mere tolerance. The number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the US over 2023 alone is almost triple that of 2022, at a staggering 510 across state legislatures. Most of these surrounded education, with healthcare and drag following closely as areas under attack. Needless to say, we are not yet past that point.
Still, the concept of merch remains a pain point in the community. To what extent do we need to monetise our existence for the sake of visibility?
Are brands back in the closet?
This year, I’ve gotten fewer Pride pitches promoting collaborations, merchandise and activations than in the past. Scroll through any social media platform and you’ll also find fewer brands updating their logos to rainbow iterations this year, which, when all factors considered, may speak to the online saturation and satirisation of Pride merchandise — do brands want to be on the receiving end of a joke about them being capitalist ‘allies’? Yet what seems to be the case is that, in an election year, brands are looking to step back in their participation of social issues as they pertain to politics; looking to avoid a fiasco much like Bud Light’s 2023 campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, when she promoted the beer in a TikTok marketing campaign that ignited the fury of conservatives in the US.
Bud Light has yet to recover from the conservative backlash. In the aftermath, the brand lost its crown as the country’s number one beer for the first time in 22 years. Target, for one, is cutting down the amount of stores it offers its Pride collection in, per NBC, with the full range still available to shop online. According to a statement by the retailer shared with NBC, the decision is based on store per sales data, which dropped in 2023 following the political fallout.
This is a stark contrast to the retail and consumer trends of the last election year. In 2020, as reported by Vogue Business, Gen Z was looking for brands to step up in regards to social responsibility — and they followed suit. This much has changed with the rise of TikTok and either anti-overconsumption trends like ‘de-influencing’ or anti-brand monopoly hacks such as dupes. The consumer now knows too much. And in 2023, we reported that they had grown sceptical of brands, with shoppers wanting companies to lead with authenticity while steering clear of ‘moral merch’. We want brands to sit in conversation with us, even though we don’t always follow through with our own spending habits.
Brands have, at least, become better at speaking to us rather than at us, hiring queer creatives and performers to execute and front their Pride collections. The argument is that as long as the community gets to also benefit from the capitalism of it all, it should be fine. But this is a slippery slope in itself. When we asked for non-performative allyship, brands listened, but rather than committing, it seems they’ve stepped back altogether.
Pride with intention
Late last month, Norris unveiled the second chapter of her partnership with luggage brand Away. Last year, she created a line of carry-on bags with her popular slogans in mind, all with funny nods to travelling and fashion rather than queerness directly (one of which is printed with the words “5-7 Looks”, another with “HMU” for “hair and makeup”). They were not available for purchase, instead being gifted to a select list in Norris’s community. Away and Norris partnered again this year, the collection this time extended to garment bags (one of which is printed with “This Is Personal”, while a carry-on has a quote by Norris about baggage and another with a cheeky “Something to Declare”). The collection is being offered at retail this year.
“It was great last year, and exactly what it should have been, so I was reluctant to do it again, but with Away I had a wonderful partner,” says Norris. “There is a bigger point to make here about how brands are shells without people in them. The reason that this partnership was so successful is because there was a passionate human, gay power coming from both sides here. I also had someone to carry it with me this year, which is West Dakota [the NYC drag artist], which shows how important it is to expand this ecosystem and bring more people in.”
It is, and perhaps it should be, less about boosting the brand’s top line and more about being in conversation with the community in a way that demonstrates explicit support. Up to $30,000 of what is sold at Away, says Norris, is being donated to the IGLTA (International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association), which focuses on making travel more accessible to everyone. Her collection this year does not include rainbows, but never say never: after avoiding the rainbow, Norris says she’s reconsidering. “If you trace it back to its origin, the Pride flag was created with each colour having a beautiful and significant story, and we still need to and should love it. We do, in a way, need [rainbow merch]. It’s a very ‘fashion’ [industry] point of view to think we don’t,” she says.
What Norris and Away have been able to show is that the next step in Pride marketing is less so about stepping away from rainbows and more about intention.
There are ways to get it right. For 2024, Adidas has once again partnered with Athlete Ally on a capsule co-created with Brazilian drag artist Pabllo Vittar. Calvin Klein drew positive attention online with this year’s Pride campaign, which featured a video directed by Gordon Von Steiner, Troye Sivan’s creative director who headed the artist’s three latest music videos including the viral ‘Rush’ and ‘One Of Your Girls’; the brand also tapped choreographer Sergio Reis and dancer Mauro Van De Kerkhof, both of whom also worked on ‘Rush’. This, I found to be a curious and astute alignment on behalf of the brand. While Calvin Klein leans into what the community has reacted positively to, the brand doesn’t simply replicate it, but works with the same team.
What pays off here is that it’s much less about pandering and empty allyship and more about meeting the community where it’s at. Donations are great, and they should be prioritised with Pride activations, but so should be the hiring of queer people to speak to us.
Do we need a couple of rainbow-logo-clad briefs or a Pride charcuterie board? Probably not, and much could be said about the commodification of queer vernacular, which in this given case stems from the Black queer community. Yet if the alternative is to be shoved back in the closet for the sake of compliance, then pass the cheese and cold meats.
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