The chain has also removed ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ signs from the childrenswear sections at the store to avoid ‘reinforcing gender stereotypes’.

From now on, labels on the clothing will say either ‘Boys & Girls or ‘Girls & Boys’ and will be on all John Lewis clothing from newborn to 14 years.

Even dresses with flowers and skirts will carry the unisex labels.

The only thing that won’t be unisex is school uniforms, but they’ll soon be switching over soon.

In addition to its new labels, John Lewis has also brought out some ‘non-gender specific’ clothing, which includes trousers, jumpers and dresses that feature images of dinosaurs, toy soldiers and spaceships.

Pictures of the new collection show girls wearing blue trousers and boys wearing tops with pink and coral on them.

The move to gender-neutral clothing has since been welcomed by parents.

Judith Byrne, from Lancashire, shared a picture of a dinosaur dress with a ‘Boys & Girls’ tag on and wrote: ‘Thanks John Lewis. Gender neutral clothing with style for kids.’

Caroline Bettis, the head of childrenswear at John Lewis, told MailOnline: ‘We do not want to reinforce gender stereotypes within our John Lewis collections and instead want to provide greater choice and variety to our customers, so that the parent or child can choose what they would like to wear.’

The department store said it would also be reviewing its online shopping site, which still includes boys’ and girls’ clothing options.

It comes after several retailers were criticised over their sexist clothing ranges.

Gap was slammed for an advert promoting its new clothing raneg that referred to girls as ‘social butterflies’ and boys as ‘little scholars’.

Asda was also criticised for selling boys’ T-shirts with slogans like ‘Future Scientist’ and ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ on them, while the girls clothing had slogans like ‘Pretty Rock’ and ‘Hey Cutie’ on them.

But some people pointed out the fact that John Lewis’ adult clothing sections were still separated into Men and Womens’ and asked why childrenswear should not do the same.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the site: ‘Boys and girls labels and signs are informative. I think removing them could be very confusing for the consumer.’

Source:-thehindu