“I Wool SURVIVE” - Gay Sheep Escape Slaughter House

A fashion show in Chelsea this week featured a very special kind of fabric: wool harvested from gay sheep. Designer Michael Schmidt teamed up with German sheep farmer Michael Stücke and LGBTQ dating app Grindr to launch a line of knits that have the added benefit of saving the lives of the sheep that produced the wool. 

The idea springs from ovine math: one in 12 male sheep are gay or at least “male-oriented,” meaning they won’t mate with females but will cavort with each other. Such unreproductive rams usually end up in the slaughterhouse. As Schmidt tells the New York Times, “the sheep are killed for being gay.”

Stücke, who has a 100-acre sheep farm in Westphalia, was troubled enough by this situation in 2024 to launch Rainbow Wool, a German non-profit that rescues gay rams from slaughter. The lads do have one advantage over females: unlike pregnant ewes, rams continue to produce wool. Stücke’s farm houses more than 500 sheep, 35 of them male-oriented rescues. 

Stücke’s collaboration with Schmidt – an acclaimed designer with iconic clients like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Cher – produced three dozen handcrafted looks inspired by gay camp: firemen, sailors, motorcycle guys. The Chelsea show was dubbed “I Wool Survive,” a nod to Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit from 1978, subsequently embraced as a gay anthem.

“I don’t view this really as fashion,” says Schmidt. “I view it as an art project. It’s selling an idea more than a collection of clothing, and the idea it’s selling is that homosexuality is not only part of the human condition, but of the animal world. That puts the lie to this concept that being gay is a choice. It’s part of nature.”

Schmidt hopes other farmers will be inspired by Stücke’s approach to save their own rams.

The story of Rainbow Wool is documented here. You can adopt a gay sheep here.

Photo credit: Rainbow Wool via Instagram