Asda has become the first supermarket to launch a specific gender-neutral children’s clothing line.
Items in the 22-piece Little Angels collection carry slogans such as “curious crew” or “happy crew” and are aimed at children from three months to four years.
Glenda Hansford, the buying and design director for George at Asda, said that “value, style and convenience were central to bringing this range to life”.
Asda has said that “mixing things up” was part of the motivation.
Many parents have expressed dismay for years at overtly gendered clothing, often depicting girls as princesses-in-training and boys as aspiring construction workers.
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Sally Dear, founder of Ducky Zebra, a gender-neutral children’s clothing line, said she was “delighted” by Asda’s.
“Clothes allow us to express who we are and how we feel. When they’re heavily gendered from birth — think pink, cute and kind versus blue, aggressive and confident — they can encourage children to behave in a particular way.
“By removing these ‘boxes’ or ‘limits’ we can allow children to be whoever and whatever they want to be. We hope the new Asda collection is a real success — and they can grow their unisex offering even further in the future.”
Debbie Hayton, a transgender teacher and writer, said: “Maybe I am getting old, but unisex clothing is nothing new.
“Especially for babies. It makes sense, especially if you have children of both sexes and want to pass it down.
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“But they call it gender-neutral and they seem to think they have done something revolutionary.”
Stephanie Davies-Arai, director of Transgender Trend — a campaign group which professes that “no child is born in the wrong body”, said that the clothes line “looks like a return to the time when all we expected from baby clothes was that they were practical, comfortable and good value for money”.
“So why does Asda feel the need to market their baby clothes as a way to promote ‘diversity and inclusion’? It’s the comfort of the baby that’s important, not the social justice credentials of the retailer. The clothes may be great but the marketing just looks like virtue-signalling the latest buzz words.”
“Baby clothes always used to be unisex, babygrows were just plain white. It is only over the last decade that children’s clothes have become so strictly coded into pink for girls and blue for boys.
Christopher McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education — another conservative pressure group, feels that “gender-neutral clothing should be offered alongside gendered clothing including blue for boys and pink for girls”.
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Asda will continue to stock “boy and girl-specific” clothing alongside its gender-neutral range, as well as its range for children with disabilities.
“Many parents will be alarmed that Asda has joined the bandwagon seeking to abolish gender,” McGovern added. “Babies and infants should not have to carry the burden of adult neuroses.”
John Lewis removed gender stereotypes from their own-brand children’s wear in 2017 in what it said was an effort to provide greater choice and variety to customers through gender-less labels.
It was the first major retailer to bring in gender-neutral labels in children’s clothing up to age 14 and remove gendered signs from the children’s section in stores.
Hansford said: “Our customers love Asda’s Little Angels [baby] products so it was a natural fit to evolve the brand into children’s clothing.”
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“All our customers have access to trend-led products for their children that they can pick up at the same time as their weekly shop.”
