UK’s leading department store John Lewis scraps ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ labels from children’s clothing
John Lewis has relaunched all of its children clothing as gender neutral, making it the first UK retailer to do so.
The department store has stripped all “boys” and “girls” labels from all of its children’s clothes.
In place, the clothing will read “Girls & Boys” or “Boys & Girls”.
School uniforms have yet to be changed but officials at John Lewis have said that it will soon be switched.
All clothing will now be mixed too, instead of having separate sections for gendered clothing.
Caroline Bettis, the head of childrenswear at John Lewis said it did not want to “reinforce gender stereotypes” with its childrenswear.
Bettis said: “We introduced new non-gender specific John Lewis stitched labels and combined “Girls & Boys” swing tags to clothing for John Lewis own label collections in 2016.
“In line with this change, our policy is to no longer specify areas or use signage which say “Girls” or “Boys” in our shops.
“We do not want to reinforce gender stereotypes within our John Lewis collections and instead want to provide greater choice and variety to our customers so that the parent or child can choose what they would like to wear.
We are absolutely thrilled by this announcement from John Lewis!
Alongside changes coming at Clarks Shoes, THIS… https://t.co/3mDf87A4vK
— LetClothesBeClothes (@letclothesbe) September 2, 2017
Let Clothes be Clothes, a campaign group for gender neutral clothing worked with John Lewis to enact the change.
They celebrated the move towards a non-binary range as “fantastic news”.
They said: “Higher-end, independent clothing retailers have been more proactive at creating gender-neutral collections, but we hope unisex ranges will filter down to all price points.
We still see many of the supermarkets, for example, using stereotypical slogans on their clothing,” they added.
