The Problem With Brands’ Gender Neutral Collections

In the past few years, as fashion brands have realized the financial upside of being more inclusive, they’ve begun to target the non-binary community by venturing into gender-neutral and genderless fashion. While on the surface, this is a good thing for fashion — an industry that has long overlooked anyone who wasn’t a cisgender, white, straight-sized shopper — the plain-looking brown sweats and boxy T-shirts that often come out as a result of these largely uninspired gender-neutral collections do little for the community they are supposed to cater to. For one, there are often modeled on androgynous-looking skinny, white models, suggesting that it’s, well, the model image of a non-binary shopper.