Giving all kids a choice with colourful clothes

JUST KIDS: Gladstone's Rachel Hansen with some of the gender-neutral clothing she has sourced for children.

Disillusioned by the rows of muted clothes for boys, and pink and purple girls' outfits while shopping for her kids, Gladstone's Rachel Hansen wished someone would set up a children's shop which didn't "yell gender stereotypes".

Eventually, she got tired of wishing and decided that someone was her.

Rachel is the founder of Freedom Kids, a home-based business specialising in gender-neutral, ethically-made children's clothing.

All clothes, which are either New Zealand-made or sourced from overseas fair trade producers, are designed to be worn by both genders, and covered with colourful planets, native birds, animals and robots -- as opposed to super heroes and Disney princesses.

Rachel, a mum of two and a gender and sexuality educator, set up her business a year ago, becoming disheartened by seeing clothing constantly divided into rigid boxes in mainstream stores.

"For boys, it's blues and browns, and tractors and guns; for girls, it's pink and purple, princesses and butterflies.

"It takes kids' choices away.

"There have been a few gender-neutral places overseas, and I thought 'someone has to set one up here'. Then I thought, 'okay, I'll do it'."

Rachel said one of the defining moments was noticing people treated her three-year-old daughter differently when she was wearing stereotypically feminine clothes.

"If I dressed her in pink and purple, people would always comment on her looks, and how beautiful her eyes were.

"But, if I dressed her in boyish clothing, they'd just say things like, 'look at the little rascal'.

"It wasn't okay to me that people were noticing my daughter's looks before anything else."

Rachel then began researching suppliers of gender-neutral clothing, making it a priority to find producers which "gave their workers a fair go" and didn't use child labour.

For example, one designer is part of an Indian co-operative which employs Tibetan refugees and pays for their children's education, while others are Kiwi mums who sew in the evenings while their kids are in bed.

So far, she has been able to source T-shirts, trousers and leggings, overalls, dresses, sleepwear, rainbow socks and underwear hand-sewn by a mum from Hamilton.

"The undies have been our most popular," Rachel said.

"In a lot of shops, the girls' undies are a quarter of the size of boys' ones, which isn't practical."

Also popular have been tunics emblazoned with bright motifs of planets, cars and blue cats, T-shirts screen printed with fantails, kiwi and New Zealand falcons, tops appliqued with owls and dinosaurs and pajamas covered with turquoise zeppelins.

"Because both boys and girls like vehicles, planets and dinosaurs."

Rachel said Freedom Kids has been received very positively so far.

"It's ended up much bigger than I thought. It's all done on the smell of an oily rag -- my husband is the photographer, and my kids are the models. For me, it's just important that kids have options -- clothing shouldn't have limitations."