“We are building the brand that we wish existed when we were younger.” — Abby Sugar, co-founder and chief executive of Play Out Apparel Most of fashion’s offerings conform to the gender binary, but for gender-nonconforming individuals, that can make tasks as mundane as shopping for underwear downright Sisyphean.
Consider Victoria’s Secret. After opening in 1977, it dominated the $38 billion lingerie market by selling a hyper-sexualized, hyper-gendered beauty standard.
The only problem was that even as a mall brand, it was designed with white, thin, cisgender, traditionally feminine consumers in mind.