In case you've ever wondered who those people in our photos are, that's us! As a small company that believes in creating clothing for regular people, we don't usually hire models for our product photos or banners. The people you see in the vast majority of our images are our own employees, who hold jobs in the various departments of our company. Modeling opportunities are generally available to any Dreamer who wants to participate!
This is especially true of our annual banners for Pride. While most of our banners feature a rotating cast of 3 - 5 people (this makes them easier to shoot and leave room on the image for text), our Pride banners are an open invitation to the whole company. This is because Pride is near and dear to our hearts, as many of us are queer, and the rest are allies. We personally choose causes that we care about to donate to for each pair of Pride Stripes sold, because we believe that it's important to support our community, which has been so supportive of us.
And as our Pride banner says, Pride's not just for June! We update our Pride banner every June, but leave it up year round. We also make and sell our full line of Pride Stripes all year! While we've always carried plenty of rainbow socks, our line of Pride Stripes based on other LGBTQ+ flags began because of requests from our customers, long before socks in similar colorways were widely available.
In fact, a lot of our most popular socks came into existence because of customer feedback! This year we're excited to have added more thigh highs in larger shoe sizes, including our XL Foot Longer Extraordinary Pride Stripe Thigh Highs! Our Pride Stripes line is all about representation, and that means they need to fit as many people as possible!
"Corporate Pride" (also known as "rainbow capitalism") reached a fever pitch a few years ago, and we know that regardless of how small and queer our company is, we don't exist outside of that context. What is a bit alarming, though, is how much less visible it's been this year. The rise of reactionary politics and harassment campaigns directed towards companies marketing Pride related items means that we aren't seeing nearly as many rainbows this June.
For many corporations, Pride was a convenient cash-grab, and now that they face backlash, it's more convenient to sweep it under the rug. The situation is a little different for us. Being small makes us more vulnerable to backlash, but Pride is too important for us and many of our customers to quietly drop it. Rest assured, we'll be here (and queer) all year, every year.
In closing, we'd like to thank our wonderful community of customers. Thank you for all of your suggestions, enthusiasm and support over the years. We recognize many of your names from years of orders and interactions on social media, and it always brings a smile to our faces to see a familiar name, or read your kind words. We wish you all a happy and safe Pride season!