The Phluid Project is the world’s first gender-free clothing store — and it’s empowering individuals to be themselves.
The idea came to founder Rob Smith in 2017, and he used his life savings to open the first store in NYC in 2018.
“We are part retail, part community space, and completely gender-free. That’s the way we look at it, it’s a place that is safe and welcoming and inviting to everyone,” he explained. “A lot of my life was separated in two different worlds. I really wanted to merge it into one and I was thinking about with I was doing — so I almost was living two separate lives.”
Smith was a “corporate guy” by day who worked with nonprofits at night. But after he quit his job, and started traveling around the world, the concept of The Phluid Project came to him.
“The importance right now of having The Phluid Project is it’s about addressing a generation that is not being addressed,” he explained. “Nearly half of Gen Z doesn’t identify as heterosexual. They don’t identify as being straight. So, they fall into this space. They’ve already started to look at the binary constraints that we’ve created, and they’re like, this doesn’t make sense.”
For more information, visit www.thephluidproject.com.
