Actress, comedian, and talk show host Ms. Whoopi Goldberg is sleighing the fashion world and putting a different approach on her line of ugly Christmas sweaters. Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay will sell the nine sweater collection starting November 1.
The idea originated from an offhand remark Ms. Goldberg made to her longtime business partner Mr. Tommy Leonardis about creating a fashion line for the holidays. Mr. Leonardis, who is also president of her company, Whoop, Inc., brought the idea to their mutual friend, fashion investor, and Chief Executive Officer of Hilldun Corporation Mr. Gary Wassner, according to people.com.
In contrast to existing ugly Christmas sweaters, Ms. Goldberg created her line of Christmas sweaters in order to represent all religions and races. She hopes her sweaters will demonstrate to society that there is no conventional depiction of a family or a Santa Claus. One of Ms. Goldberg’s sweater designs include an octopus that is depicted as a menorah wearing a yarmulke and another features a white Santa alongside an African American Santa. In addition, one of her Christmas sweaters displays a biracial family with a green son.
“There’s a family where everybody looks kind of the same except one person. And nobody really cares because it’s family and it’s the holidays and who could be upset about that? So it’s really all about love and family and being good. It’s really about love,” Ms. Goldberg said, according to an interview with people.com.
Upper School English Teacher and Director of the Sacred Heart Greenwich Center for Research, Teaching, and Learning Mrs. Linda Vasu conveys the necessity for brands to represent all members of society.
“The founding documents of this country articulate the fundamental human rights for all people. Therefore any branding and marketing in my opinion should reflect the cultural pluralism and diversity of this country’ demographic landscape,” Mrs. Vasu said.
Mrs. Vasu is currently teaching Ms. Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a novel that breaks societal binarisms, to the AP English Literature and Advanced Studies in Literature class. Mrs. Vasu hopes that this novel will provide students with a greater understanding of societal issues like race and gender inequality.
“In Beloved, Nobel Laureate [Ms.] Morrison focuses on the spectral presence of the female ghost Beloved to convey [Ms.] Morrison’s ideas about the persistence of systemic racism and the traumatic, damaging aftermath and legacy of slavery, memory and forgetting that continues to haunt the African American individual, familial, collective, and cultural experience in the U.S,” Mrs. Vasu said. “[Ms.] Morrison suggests that the denial of the impact of racism persists, and so she focuses on black experience in order to express her view of a dominant ‘master narrative’ that privileges white experience. In examining these paradigms, students are invited to think more fluidly about diversity and inclusion.”
– Kristen Davis, Content Editor