In Ecce Homo, we take pride in doing things quite differently from our competitors. Let us start from the obvious. Like every underwear company out there, we design and manufacture clothes with the purpose of providing all our customers with solutions to meet their need for high-quality clothing, and with the means to craft their unique gender and sexual identities. Yet, working in close collaboration with the LGBTIQ+ community itself, the designers of Ecce Homo go to great lengths to imbue our unique designs with our corporate philosophy regarding gender and sexuality. As a result, we hope our undergarments do not reproduce the dominant and mainstream images of what counts as ‘beautiful’ because we have felt on our very own skins how queer fashion hides under the pretense of beauty the oversexualization and objectification of the queer bodies, and gives a free pass to discriminatory behaviors among the members of queer community on the basis of their gender and sexual identity, age, ethnicity, race, able-bodiedness, and embodiment. This way our clothes and promotional campaigns speak for themselves, when it comes to diversity, visibility, and inclusion.

Our Free the Nipple choice testifies to this very fact. We are sure you noticed that the nipples of both men and women in our e-shop’s pictures are equally blurred. And you are probably wondering why this is so since the commonplace practice in fashion industry and social media is to cover only the female nipples. That is because we wholeheartedly support the equality among all genders throughout our business practice, designs and marketing strategies. We dare to go against the current of mainstream fashion by challenging the double standards in place regarding genders in terms of their representation. We are more than aware of how unjust and indeed hurtful to so many people who identify as women or femininities the policing of their bodies and the taming of their sexuality is. And until the sexist rules of the heteropatriarchal game change, we choose to fight back and join the worldwide Free the Nipple movement by taking this prudish rule to its logical extreme and extending it to our male models as well. In other words, we see in our clothes the potential of a political statement inscribed on our very bodies beyond the mere functionality and the beauty of our clothes.

Let us dig deeper and introduce you to our Corporate Social Responsibility program (CSR), a core part of our corporate identity. Rather than our CSR being a secondary supplement to our profit-driven activity, a marketing gimmick if you like, we aim at creating a long-lasting and substantial commitment to supporting the LGBTIQ+ community all around Europe. And this is an officially written term on our founding Charter! Our CSR enfolds towards two directions that complement each other.

First of all, we are heavily invested in supporting organizations devoted to the advocacy, empowerment, and support of the queer community in major European cities. Not only Ecce Home takes  up the role of media sponsor on behalf of these queer organizations by spreading via its social media and blog their message, but also the 5% of the price of each purchase (before VAT) is to be donated by Ecce Homo to one organization of customer’s choosing. Thus, the consumer chooses an organisation from a list of ones of different subject matters and across Europe in an attempt to cover as many issues -that the queer community in its diversity faces- as possible. We want to make it perfectly clear that this amount does not fall on our customers in any way, and it is rather withheld from the firm’s income, and that transparency reports are to be published periodically on our website.

Secondly, by providing the human capital of the Ecce Homo’s team members and covering -entirely or partially- the costs, we are to organize ourselves -or in collaboration with queer organizations that stand up for the LGBTIQ+ folks- inhouse activities, such as workshops, webinars, street work projects, etc. Such an initiative is already in works, the alliance between Ecce Homo and Positive Voice, the Greek Association of People Living with HIV, that aims at producing and distributing to the Greek LGBTIQ+ sex workers in need protective -against Covid-19 virus- masks. Another tangible example of our engagement constitutes our plan to create soon a product line specifically designed for pre-operative trans women and men, one of the most vulnerable and financially deprived groups within the LGBTIQ+ community, available at below-cost prices (before VAT) and in close collaboration with the trans community itself. And that is because we recognize the heavy toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on trans people due to the financial and social crisis that it has left in its wake.

Stay tuned to our social media (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter)! This way you will be kept informed of both the ceaseless development of our CSR program and the activities of the organization you chose to support via your purchase. Also, do not forget to take a look at our environmental program! 

Thank you for helping us support the LGBTIQ+ community of Europe. We would not be able to do so without you.

Sincerely, 

The CSR department of Ecce Homo