INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
A CELEBRATION OF WOMANHOOD
Why is this day so important to us at OutsideIn?
This International Women’s Day, as a growing team (now majority female!) we felt it was important to not only recognise the significance of this day, but to celebrate it too! In true OutsideIn style, we wanted this global celebration and our efforts around it, to give back and impact those in need in whichever way we could. Alongside an incredible collection designed by the amazing women at Oi, we are donating two period kits to women experiencing homelessness. These brilliant kits supplied by Time Of The Month (TOTM) are organic, eco-friendly and sustainable, and will be supporting the Simon Community in Belfast and the women it supports. Each period kit contains 3 tampons, 3 sanitary pads and 2 liners, and our Social Impact team has worked so hard to make sure we can give two kits for every one T-Shirt sold in the collection to ensure that each woman who receives these is covered for a whole cycle.
A lack of Period Dignity is one of many issues women experiencing homelessness will face and we hope that each day, and not just on this one, we can continue to tackle these obstacles and positively impact the wonderful women around us.
A Look Behind the Collection:
When beginning with this collection, we wanted to create a product that was completely tailored to women, even as a unisex brand, and we hoped that the design would reflect our appreciation for our female audience who have so loyally followed and supported us over the years. We finally landed on two, super cute, boxy T-Shirts made specifically for the female form of all shapes and sizes. The women on our team tried them on and we all loved the fit! You can check out the versatility of the product on Lauren and Rebecca’s style guide dropping SOON!
After we decided on a fit, we got to work on the design. When thinking about women and what we represent, we felt that the living determine what this is. Defining what it means to be a woman is far beyond our biological features! It is to be a part of a powerful movement, rich with compassion and filled with kindness, and we take the vulnerability that comes with that kindness and accompany that with great resilience and strength.
Thankfully, we live in an age where we accept and empower a rainbow of possibilities between the archetypal pink and blue gender stereotypes. We know that throughout history there was always a very specific model for how to be that stereotype - you know, how to walk, talk and act the part - and while this is a battle that is still very evident in society today, now more than ever women are showing up with more nuanced and varied existence, making what it means to be a woman not a one-size-fits-all definition but more a specific story for every individual.
With this in mind, on our basic T-Shirt, we have simple, minimal embroidery. On the Cream, we have delicate purple embroidery and on the Graphite, a soft pink. For those of you who know OutsideIn, you’ll know that our front embroidery is usually in neutral tones like black or white! So, we took this opportunity to mix this up and display not only the archetypal pink for those who love it and those who want to take ownership of it, but a beautiful purple too which represents so many things. For this T-Shirt, we chose it to represent gender equality and a message of inclusion that says you can be whatever being a woman means to you and your individual story.
As the collection developed and as we discussed womanhood in more detail, from our own struggles to what this means for us individually, we could appreciate the differences as well as the similarities that unite and celebrate our uniqueness. This spurred us to add an additional piece to the collection with a very special design. This design represents not only the special occasion that is International Women’s Day, but it also represents the time we’ve spent bonding as a team and the message we want to pass on to all our fellow women out there. To bring this design to life, we asked our followers to submit words to our Instagram that encapsulated what being a woman means to them. We got tons of incredible responses and the words were so moving and so empowering! As we started piecing everything together, we fell in love with the additional design and what it stood for - so much so that we added it to pretty much everything! So now, from these special products to our flyers to the Tags of Hope that will accompany every period pack given, you’ll get to enjoy the words that you and your fellow sisters in the Oi Fam have shared.
Throughout piecing together this collection, the key lesson we learned along the way is that there is always more to every story.
Every woman has her own story to tell, her own individual collection of experiences, and her own ideas of what it means to be a woman.
No matter who you are or where you’re from, we hope to share the message that it is the stories and experiences that make up a woman, not being a woman that dictates the story. And so, meet our newest collection and be encouraged by what it represents: That there’s more to your story. Period.
