Gap Celebrates Pride Month

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (MAY 21, 2019) Gap, the iconic American cultural brand, today announces a creative campaign and collection that celebrates 2019 Pride Month, honoring the diversity of the LGTBQIA+ community and Jodie Patterson’s chosen family, and includes a partnership with the United Nations Foundation and UN Free & Equal, a campaign of the UN Human Rights Office to promote equal rights and fair treatment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people globally.          

Gap’s 2019 Pride Month campaign celebrates “love all ways” and what is truly timeless: being true to oneself and one another. As the mother to Penel Ghartey, a transgender boy, Jodie is known for her courageous and poetic book The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, which explores identity, gender, race, and authenticity to tell the real-life story of a family’s history and transformation. She has become an activist in the LGTBQIA+ community with a determination to create a more loving world — not only for her son, but for all.

“Celebrating love has been an inherent part of Gap’s DNA from the beginning and Jodie Patterson and her chosen family are full of love,” says Alegra O’Hare, Chief Marketing Officer of Gap. “It was important for us as a brand to take a stand for what we believe in and create a meaningful campaign that shines light on the LGBTQIA+ community and their incredible stories. We hope to inspire our consumers from around the world to love all ways.”

Shot in classic black and white portraits, Gap has captured the honest and authentic dynamic of what it means to love and be loved within Jodie's chosen family. Courageous, loving, and open-hearted trailblazers, Jodie’s chosen family includes friends, relatives, mentors, and neighbors.

Within the campaign portraits, Jodie and her chosen family wear the Gap 2019 PRIDE collection, featuring messages of love and acceptance. Gap’s 2019 PRIDE collection includes easy to wear fashion and accessories for women, men, kids and babies. 

Jodie Patterson comments, “when I think about this moment we are in, I see how important it is to centralize all identities. To ask ourselves to see those whom we have never seen before. In particular those who have been marginalized. My family is complex and layered. We come from all over the world, speak over 5 languages, pray in unique ways, identify across the spectrum, love as we see fit. I am so proud of GAP for seeing us and centralizing us. In the midst of all this decisiveness, some decide to come together and simply say YES.”