The Story
“we aren’t about rainbows and unicorns just for the sake of rainbows and unicorns”
Life Isn’t Pride.
Simple Gay Apparel is meant to transcend Pride as we know it. You aren’t just a rainbow, just a “gay person” who only pops into existence every June for out-of-touch brands to label and commoditize — for brands to fake care about and reductionistically appeal to — in pursuit of their main goal, the almighty dollar.
You’re more than that — you’re a gay person with a gay experience. And, as you know, our gay experience isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Rainbows and unicorns fail to acknowledge the existence of the long path that we drudged along before being able to finally peek our head out of the darkness and at some point, hopefully, become relatively shameless.
I created Simple Gay Apparel because the market offerings weren’t getting it. I was craving subtlety and nuance. I was craving visibility, representation, and multi-dimensionality in my pursuit to be out confidently.
My Dark Design Inspiration.
After I set out to design subtle and nuanced visibility, I realized that a lot of my unconscious inspiration was coming from darkness and shame that defined my gay experience — darkness that I wanted to acknowledge, reclaim, take ownership over, and make light of. I think there’s something empowering about acknowledging a thing as it really is — in acknowledging pain, in acknowledging shame, in acknowledging the process — and in owning it frankly and simply, in humor and irony.
With my designs, I use various symbols to create stories, little snapshots of emotions and sentiments that represent the wide spectrum of the gay experience — from shame to spite, from loneliness to pride.
My Commitment To Quality.
Designing gay visibility so that you can be out, confidently isn’t just about designing fire graphics. Fire graphics need fire canvases. No matter how great the graphic, if the shirt is ugly and uncomfortable, you’re not going to wear it. So I tested over 20 different shirt styles before landing on these — which I carefully selected for their relaxed style and flattering fit no matter your body type, their softness and material quality, their thickness and non-transparency, their unique and complementary colors, and their overall aesthetic.
