This is Rainbow Wool: Gay Sheep, Fashion, and Grindr, Oh My!

When I tripped onto the New York Times looking for recent news, gay sheep and fashion weren't really what yer boy Hank here was expecting to find. But find it I did, in a heartwarming story about saving gay sheep from the slaughterhouse, and the German farmer, the LA rock clothing designer, and the gay hook-up app that brings it all together. This is Rainbow Wool!

Michael Stücke is the cofounder, alongside his friend and public relations expert Nadia Leytes, of Rainbow Wool, an organization that saves "gay" male sheep, or rams, from the slaughterhouse. According to the NYTimes article, approximately 1 in 12 rams are male-oriented; they have no interest in mating with the female ewes. They bond with other rams. On a typical sheep farm where the ratio for mating could be 1 ram for 50 ewes, the main job of a ram is to breed. No breeding? No use for the ram. And off to the slaughterhouse they go.

When Stûcke and Leytes, both gay, discovered this trend, they worked to create Rainbow Wool, wherein the rams could be relocated to farms more dedicated to wool and meat production. Pregnant ewes stop growing wool, but rams grow their wool continuously, so they're always a moneymaker for farmers like Stûcke, who currently has 35 rescue rams along with his other 500 on his farm in Löhne. The rescued wool is made of a mix of breeds, so the wool is sent to a specialty Spanish mill to spin the wool into yarn, which is made into clothing products for sale from their retail store, and you can also sponsor a ram to help with their feeding and care on the farm!

It was Leytes (at the time, Stûcke had never heard of Grindr) who reached out to Grindr for PR for Rainbow Wool. Enter Tristan Pineiro, the senior vice president for brand marketing and communications at Grindr, to help bring Stûcke and Leytes's vision international. Pineiro regards the significance of their collaboration as a reflection of the story of many gay people, “The gay sheep get discarded, get forgotten, are seen as not valuable,” Mr. Pineiro said. “But through them, two people who would never otherwise have met, a German sheep farmer and a Los Angeles designer, got connected and together created something beautiful.” That designer is Michael Schmidt, who was brought in by Pineiro.

Schmidt, who has designed for everyone from Cher to Doja Cat, put the situation bluntly. "The sheep are killed for being gay.” Working with Stûcke and using the Grindr platform for visibility, he created the "I Wool Survive" line of clothing, bringing attention to Rainbow Wool. The 37 pieces are reminiscent of gay male archetypes: the pizza boy, the gladiator, the coach, the poolboy. "I really wanted to lean into the gay," he told the NY Times. The collection was first presented on Nov. 13th in NYC. “I don’t view this really as fashion,” Mr. Schmidt said. “I view it as an art project. It’s selling an idea more than a collection of clothing, and the idea it’s selling is that homosexuality is not only part of the human condition, but of the animal world. That puts the lie to this concept that being gay is a choice. It’s part of nature.”

Scroll through the IG post below to see some of the knitwear looks in the collection.

When Pineiro managed a meeting on Stúcke's farm with Schmidt, the two bonded over farm life, as Schmidt also grew up isolated and gay in the American Midwest. Said Stûcke of that meeting, “It just means so much that someone who is so far away and so famous and coming from such a different world is taking the moment to visit the sheep and to do something with our wool."

Rainbow Wool! Check it out!

Click here to visit Rainbow Wool, order from their store, and sponsor a sheep of your own!

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