A new company calling itself We Wear the Pants has just released a #MeToo denim capsule which features #MeToo headlines from major newspapers laser-etched onto up-cycled jeans. And Racked is not having it.
While the collection was launched, according to the founders, to start “a thought provoking conversation about sexual harassment for women in the workplace,” Racked’s Nadra Nittle is unconvinced.
“What’s unclear, however, is how a denim line will advance the discussion,” she writes. “The pieces range from $58 to $375, meaning many of the women most vulnerable to such abuse, like domestic, agricultural, and food service workers, won’t be able to afford the capsule collection.”
Nittle also points out that the largest size available in the collection is a 10, which means that “only some women will be able to wear the pieces from the line,” a fact that seems particularly tone-deaf considering “the research indicating that sexual abuse survivors are more likely to be obese than the general population and thus unable to fit into a line designed with them in mind.”
And while denim has been used to “raise awareness about sexual assault” before, “activists wearing jeans in solidarity with sexual assault victims is not the same as a high fashion collection that includes $250 #MeToo jeans.”
Making matters slightly more fraught, according to the article, just 10 percent of proceeds generated by the We Wear the Pants collection will ultimately be donated to charity, which pales in comparison to other awareness-raising fashion efforts — like the Kate Bosworth/J. Brand capsule that donated 100 percent of its proceeds to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking.
“Whom do these politically charged fashions really serve?” Nittle wonders. “Is the goal actually to help them, or are these collections yet another way for the fashion elite to pat themselves on the back?”
You can read more about it at Racked.
