Issue #067

Welcome to your weekly dose of TooXToo, this week, with Pride month in full swing, we take a look at some of the brands who are celebrating the LGBTQ community.  

In recent years, Pride month has become an opportunity for brands to show their solidarity, but for many it has become a calendar moment – we are looking at you - M&S ‘LGBT Sandwich’. However, 2021 see’s initiatives which are instead steeped in protest, change and power.  

Gap’s authentic representation

Gap’s current Pride ad campaign features a cast of six including an activist, dancer and musician and Bryan Oliver, one of its own district managers. The brand made the decision to recruit a group of diverse and authentic people, showing that choosing the most popular influencers isn’t always the best approach.  

The campaign runs alongside the brands ongoing ‘spirit of activism’ collaborations where designs are created for specific communities by the community itself.  

 

Reebok partner with Colorful Souls and Gay Times    

Reebok are celebrating Pride by promoting a Pride footwear collection designed by Colorful Soles (its internal LGBTQ worker group) with a 60-second spot paying homage to the ‘House of Ninja’ collective – born out of a ‘ballroom’. 

The campaign video celebrates voguing and its significance in creating safe spaces for people to express their identity. 

Reebok is also partnering with Gay Times on a project, In Your Hometown which follows a number of LGBTQ teenagers in Northern cities across the UK. The imagery captured as part of the campaign will be featured across the Gay Times and Reebok portfolios.

 

Balenciaga stick to what they know best

Balenciaga, infamous for their logo parodies and meme inducing clothing have stuck to what they know best for Pride month.  

They have created a Pride hoodie mimicking Gap’s logo range, with campaign ads shot in tourist locations around the globe. 

“I’m gay. I grew up in a society where I couldn’t have worn that, and there are places you still cannot today […] This is the political fashion activism that I can do,” 
Gvasalia told Vogue. 

Skittles give back the rainbow    

Gay Times and LGBT Switchboard charity helpline have worked with the Skittles brand (whose usual packaging famously features a rainbow) to partner on a project which has been created to give something back. 

The ad series features black and white photographs taken in the 1970s with elements recoloured, alongside the tagline: “During Pride, only one rainbow deserves to be seen’.