A Philadelphia based queer Latinx company shows us that we are one people – one heart. You may have seem the buttons or shirts around OUTFest. Their simple yet provocative design attracted a lot of a attention. They come from unatee.co – a local queer Latinx owned and operated company creating products that promote love, unity and socially-conscious messaging comprised of two locals – Elicia Gonzales and Didier García. We sat down to talk with the two local entrepreneurs.
They met many years ago at an event and their friendship deepened over the past few years. They had worked together while Elicia was at GALAEI and they always encouraged and supported each other to be their best selves.
"So Didier and I had been talking about creating tshirts for a solid four years.” said Gonzales, “We finally decided that now was the time to make the dream a reality. We came up with the name unatee (a play on the word UNITY that incorporated tee for shirts.) The purpose is to promote love, unity, and social consciousness.”
“There are some great companies out there,” continues Gonzales, “who are promoting queer pride, racial pride, etc. but there is still a need for tshirts and other merchandise that goes ‘beyond the rainbow’ if you will. Outfest was the launched and unatee.co was very well received, with some people spotting the table and making a beeline to check us out from across the street.”
“The ‘heart-ons’ are our first collection.”, said Didier García, “Those designs were a response to an art exhibit that Elicia and I worked on in 2013 called SEXO. This exhibition celebrated the SEXO LATEX campaign that was launch in the 90s by Galaei. We made ‘heart-on’ buttons for the exhibit and the idea was born into existence.”
You can follow them on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. and they would love our community’s input on their next designs with a poll that will be coming out in next couple of weeks.
“We want this to be very much ‘of and for the people'”
@moon_unit & @nick.electric showing us their #heartons at #outfest #unatee #love
A photo posted by unatee.co (@unatee.co) on
A photo posted by unatee.co (@unatee.co) on