About Qwear Fashion

Qwear Fashion is the first online LGBTQIA+ style incubator. The birthplace of the #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike Movement, Qwear Fashion has been a space for fashion and gender activists to gather and form community since 2011.

Qwear Fashion uses fashion as a health tool to improve LGBTQIA+ quality of life. Expression is integral to forming our identities in a society that constantly acts to erase us — but many LGBTQIA+ people don’t have a safe space to be themselves. Qwear Fashion is here for anyone outside the heteronormative and cisnormative mold to explore their style and invent trends.

Qwear Fashion was founded in Boston by trans activist Sonny Oram, and is now co-owned by Sonny and their partner, Ru, who is Qwear’s Fashion Director. Qwear Fashion has grown to include a team of creatives spanning the United States, as well as contributors from around the world. In 2019, Sonny founded Qwear Media to help increase LGBTQIA+ representation in advertising.

Qwear Fashion publishes content including answering reader’s style “Qwearies,” as well as documenting expression through style profiles, interviews, events, commentary, and personal pieces. Qwear Fashion elevates independent brands and designers, reviews clothing, and educates the mainstream fashion industry about queer identities. Our community pieces bring together those of us whose stories are too often erased, such as femmes of color and plus size androgynous expression. Our editorials showcase projects and events happening within the queer fashion sphere.

Qwear Fashion has produced several fashion installations and shows. In 2015, Dismantle Me explored the vibrant interaction between traditional fashion aesthetics and the queer experience. Dismantle Me appeared in Queer Fashion Week, Oakland, April 2015; Rainbow Fashion Week, New York, June 2015; VERGE at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Fashion Week, October 2015. Qwear Fashion’s Femme Desire show was a site-specific fashion installation at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art on October 7th, 2016 that exposed the limits within which fashion designers and society put on the expression of femininity. Legendary Children at Boston University Art galleries on Feb 2, 2018, explored the historical limits of gender in mainstream spaces.

Our Mission

To increase LGBTQIA+ quality of life through gender expression.

Our Values

Community

We believe that community is integral to our quality of life as queer people. As certain queer identities become normalized within white and cis spaces, we aim to keep our community united in our fight for liberation by coming together on a single platform. Everyone is invited to contribute to Qwear regardless of photography or writing experience. Share your voice and email us your work for consideration: info@qwearfashion.com. We do our best to publish as many articles from the community as we can.

Prioritizing Marginalized Voices

By elevating the voices of our more marginalized members of the LGBTQIA+ community, we hope to allow those with more access to power the chance to learn from and fight for the existence of those who have been silenced. We focus on featuring BIPOC, people of size, people with disabilities, femmes, people of trans experience, asexual people, intersex people, and all those not visible in the mainstream media.

Environmental Consciousness

The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. Fast fashion companies are destroying the environment while making cheap clothes that fall apart and get thrown out after only a few uses. This directly affects LGBTQIA+ communities who rely on natural resources to survive, as well as all those in the underpaid labor market. For this reason, we focus on featuring designers and brands who are environmentally conscious and who don't use sweatshops. We also encourage thrifting and repurposing rather than buying new clothes.

Safety First

We put safety first and we have a 0 tolerance against violence and bullying. if we hear that someone featured has inflicted violence upon someone, we remove their articles and block them from our platforms. Violence and bullying include physical and verbal attacks such as racism, transphobia, femmephobia, body shaming, transmisogyny, or any kind of harassment. We monitor the space closely to ensure that everyone here feels safe, heard, and respected. For questions or concerns, please email us at info@qwearfashion.com.

Body Positivity

We believe that all bodies are beautiful. We actively reject the fashion industry’s insistence that being thin is the ultimate goal. We encourage Qwears of all shapes and sizes to submit your photos so we can proudly display the beauty of all bodies. We work hard to bring body diversity into every project and are proud to have articles with exclusively large bodies like “Qwear Crushes: 30 LGBTQIA+ Babes Proving Fashion Has No Size” a collaboration with fat influencer Alysse Dalessandro.

Get Involved

Press Quotes

“Qwear provides a crucial platform for the marginalized and too often victimized members of the LGBTQ community. As queer individuals grow into their true identities, Qwear can be used as a trusted guide and safe space for all.” — Moxie

“Qwear has evolved into an online community center: a safe haven for folks to talk, play around with fashion, see and be seen.” — DESIGN*SPONGE

What Readers Are Saying

“Qwear was (& still is!) so important in helping me figure out my nonbinary transmasc identity. Thank you for creating a space that makes room for all the beautiful ways people can do gender” — Anonymous

“Qwear has shown me a huge variety of subcultures, aesthetics, and expressions within a world that I had initially thought was very narrow!” — Karen Lowe

“For our son to see a community that acts as both a mirror and a window to who is and who he may become is essential to his developing sense of self.” — Tracey

“Qwear has given me an opportunity to connect with people on a deeper level — to better understand their stories and the ways in which their stories align with and diverge from my own. As a result, I’m able to develop empathy, hold and process complexity, and grow my capacity to develop safe and meaningful relationships.” — Anna Rae