Pride Month has drawn to a close. We all know it is a time for celebration, reflection, and advocacy within the LGBTQ+ community. It’s also a time for hard-fought fun! Amidst the vibrant tapestry of parades and festivals, it's crucial to remember that Pride goes beyond mere labels and surface-level gestures. For a brand like Virtue, Pride means genuinely supporting the queer community in meaningful ways and helping to pioneer a future that goes beyond a mass-marketed rainbow shirt…or jockstrap.

Fashion has long been a powerful tool for self-expression. However, traditional fashion keeps reinforcing tired, boring, and utterly basic gender norms that can be restrictive and exclusionary. Just ask your non-binary and trans friends. (And if you don’t have any, think about making some). 

Virtue is made for every body, and our briefs have officially shrug off the tired conventional labels and are simply labeled by fit, either with a pouch or compact front. We hope this makes things feel simpler for our gender non-confirming and trans siblings. But even though Virtue is LGBTQ+-owned, it wasn’t created with any specific queer community in mind. Why? Because no matter who you are or how you identify, gendered fashion is wasteful and limiting. 

If you walk into a department store, most people are confined to a pen of predetermined options that will get discarded if someone of that gender doesn’t purchase them ASAP. Clothing becomes more about the gender of the person wearing them than the design, feel, comfort, or joy the clothing itself brings. That’s just a bit backwards, isn’t it?

The LGBTQ+ Community has been dismantling backwards ways of thinking since that first brick was thrown in 1969. Actually, long before that too–just look at the ancient Greeks and their very inventive ways of using olive oil. (Sorry, we can’t go for too long without it coming back to butts). Regardless, Virtue is a Pride-committed company year round because the values of Pride and the value of Virtue are one in the same: freedom, honesty, joy, self-expression, love…and fun!

And you best believe that we got busy this Pride season. On Friday, June 28th we hosted a New York City Pride kickoff reception at Maison 10– hosted by Aiden Dean, Cody Silver, and SX Noir! Maison 10 is an innovative boutique and art gallery that brings high-quality products to a wider market by using ethical consumerism as its core concept. It was a smashing success and one that we believe like Pride shouldn’t be limited to just June. So join us as we celebrate Pride here at Virtue all year long.