Santa Cruz blasted into the future of fashion last week with the release of their new “All-gender” collection. Made up of T-shirts and hoodies, the clothing is quintessentially Cali-style, in line with the company’s classic branding, and modeled on the website by a diverse group with varying body shapes and sizes.
When it comes to the human form, variety far surpasses gender. One female body can have many more similarities to a male body than another that was assigned female. At some point someone pointed to one person and said “this is normal” and ever since, the false standard has been a source of pain for millions.
Finding good clothing to skate in has been a decades-long battle for me personally and many of other female and non-trads. And this gave gas to skatepark peanut galleries. Too feminine, not feminine enough… there was no way of getting it right in the eyes of the beer holder. Since the non-trad population was so much smaller, companies rarely even made clothing for women, and if they did it wasn’t necessarily equipped to skate in. So, I have been wearing “mens” clothing for most of my life. Every time I walk into a store, I go straight to the size 7 shoes and the medium T-shirts- mens sizes of course. And I am far from alone. We have been DIYing non-gender clothing for decades, and Santa Cruz is one of the first large companies to catch on. But it won’t be the last. Hiring Alex White, who no doubt pulled for this, was possibly the smartest business decision a skate company has made in history. -Migz
