Story at a glance
- PacSun on Thursday released two new gender-neutral collections, expanding on prior initiatives aiming to attract a more androgynous client base.
- The collections, designed by Oli Carrillo and Allegra Abrams, are the product of PacSun’s Gender-Neutral Design Competition announced last year.
- Other fast fashion brands, like H&M, Zara and Forever 21, have also launched gender-neutral collections in recent years.
The clothing retailer PacSun on Thursday released two new gender-neutral collections, building on the company’s recent push toward androgyny.
The collections are the result of PacSun’s Gender-Neutral Design Competition, announced last year in partnership with the Fashion Scholarship Fund, an education and workforce development nonprofit. Competition winners Oli Carrillo and Allegra Abrams worked with PacSun product and development teams to bring their gender-neutral collections to market.
Carrillo, based in New York City and Los Angeles, said their collection was inspired by Southern California skate culture, punk rock and graffiti.
“It was important for me to look at a juxtaposition of energy and mannerisms when designing graphics. I want to cater to a contrasting binary of emotion, so that the graphics and prints don’t stick to singular femininity or masculinity,” Carrillo said in a news release.
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“It was important to mix both masculine and feminine in the same image(s) so that these graphics stand on their own, so that they could be styled in any sort of closet or outfit,” they said.
Abrams, who is also based in New York City but is originally from Minneapolis, said her genderless designs pay homage to Black culture, with a retro twist.
“The collection reflects my love for merging traditionally masculine and feminine design elements together,” Abrams said. “My aesthetic as a designer focuses on aspects of 70s fashion and referencing Black culture … Most importantly, the ‘Love to the People’ collection represents my constant focus to push inclusivity and diversity in the fashion industry.”
PacSun in 2020 launched its “Gender Neutral Shop,” featuring curated pieces of unisex clothing in response to the “shift we’ve seen in customer shopping and dressing,” Brie Olson, PacSun’s chief brand officer, said at the time. “This is the future of clothing — styles that are made for all, no matter who you are.”
Later, in 2021, Pacsun launched its first fully gender-neutral brand, “Colour Range,” a collection of sustainable, genderless clothing.
Other fast fashion brands, like H&M, Zara and Forever 21, have also launched gender-neutral collections in recent years, blurring the line between men’s and women’s fashion as shoppers, particularly younger shoppers, gravitate toward gender-fluid styles.
“Previously, fashion was very binary – it was men’s or women’s, and you never could transgress between the two,” Preston Souza, chief of staff and buyer at The Phluid Project, New York’s first genderless clothing store, told the site Rivet in 2019. “And what is really beautiful is that Generation Z is rejecting these labels. Sixty per cent of Generation Z will shop across gendered sections, proof that these binary structures are slowly phasing out.”
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