1 Out of 12 Rams is Born Gay But What Happens to The Sheep's Looking To Have Babies?
 |
Saving The Sheep
Michael Schmidt, the Chrome Hearts collaborator and rock ’n’ roll couturier to divas like Cher, Shakira and Sabrina Carpenter, was shocked when he heard about the “gay sheep.”
Or, to be fair, he was not shocked that some rams are considered gay, or “male-oriented,” meaning that they decline to mate with ewes, a behavioral pattern seen in approximately one out of every 12 rams, and that scientists have studied for decades. Rather, he was shocked to discover what happens to many such sheep that are part of large flocks on working farms — the kind of establishments where, said Scott Carmody, the head of domestic operations for Woolmark, the usual ratio is one ram per 50 ewes, and the job of the ram is procreation.
If the ram does not fulfill his duty, he is generally sent to the slaughterhouse. Essentially, “the sheep are killed for being gay,” Mr. Schmidt said.
Mr. Schmidt thought that perhaps fashion could change the situation. So though he generally spends his days working with chain mail and Swarovski crystals, he has joined forces with Rainbow Wool, a German nonprofit created by a farmer in deep Westphalia who rescues the non-mating sheep and cultivates them for their wool, and Grindr, the L.G.B.T.Q. dating app that bills itself as the “gayborhood of the world,” to bring the story to life through a 37-piece knitwear collection.
On Thursday, the knits will be showcased in the first Rainbow Wool fashion show — though calling it a “show” is, Mr. Schmidt said, a misnomer.
 |
“It’s an animal rights story,” he said. “And it’s a human rights story.”
Mr. Schmidt in a black Eraserhead T-shirt, hoodie, jeans and ball cap and multiple silver accessories smiles as he leans against the hood of a black car.
Michael Schmidt, the Los Angeles fashion designer who created the Grindr x Rainbow Wool collection.Credit...Ziv Sade
According to Tristan Pineiro, the senior vice president for brand marketing and communications at Grindr, it is also “a metaphor for how gay people are treated across the world.
“The gay sheep get discarded, get forgotten, are seen as not valuable,” Mr. Pineiro said. “But through them two people who would never otherwise have met, a German sheep farmer and a Los Angeles designer, got connected and together created something beautiful.”
At a time when business in general has backed away from potentially controversial topics, the Grindr x Rainbow Wool fashion show is an anomaly. But that, Mr. Schmidt said, is exactly why it was important. Especially because it centers on an issue — cute and cuddly sheep — that people on any side of the political spectrum can embrace.
“I don’t view this really as fashion,” Mr. Schmidt said. “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.”
 |
Mr. Pineiro put it more directly: “You can’t say the sheep were corrupted by woke culture,” he said.
Saving the Sheep
Michael StĂ¼cke, 52, the co-founder of Rainbow Wool, doesn’t look like an activist. Shy and bespectacled, he spends most of his time in a forest green tracksuit that sort of matches his fields. He grew up on a farm that kept cows and pigs and was raised with certain expectations: He would take over the family farm, and he would get married and raise his own family to help him do it.
“There was a lot of pressure,” he said, standing in the middle of one of his pastures, sheep milling around his knees. “The farming business in Germany is pretty conservative.” He was speaking on his own farm, 42 hectares (just over 100 acres) of rolling green pastures and oak trees in Löhne, where he now has more than 500 sheep, 35 of them rescued male-oriented rams, as well as his own carding machine to treat their wool and ready it to be shipped to the mill.
Mr. StĂ¼cke knew he was gay from a young age but didn’t come out to his parents until he was 24. When he did, he ended up leaving the family farm and working in a paper mill. Eventually, an interest in environmentalism led him to start his own sheep farm. (Sheep can help maintain the health of the soil used to grow grains.) His adventures in sheep husbandry led him to discover the fate of the non-procreating rams, and in 2021 a discussion with a friend, Nadia Leytes, led them to start Rainbow Wool.
“We were talking about being gay and what it means,” said Ms. Leytes, who works in public relations with the Serviceplan ad agency group. “And I asked him if there were gay animals and if so, what happens to them?” Soon they were trying to come up with alternatives to the slaughterhouse.
Image
Mr. StĂ¼cke carries a light-colored sheep on his shoulders. Other sheep rest on a straw-covered floor.
 |
Michael StĂ¼cke in the infirmary of his farm. The Bentheimer Landschaf sheep on his shoulders had had a worm infection.
 |
| Then Mr. StĂ¼cke had a revelation: The male sheep have one advantage the female sheep do not have. |
“When female sheep get pregnant, they stop growing wool,” Ms. Leytes said. “But the male sheep never stop.” Their wool, she and Mr. StĂ¼cke thought, could be a business opportunity. Even if, in the beginning, the farming community saw their idea as “controversial,” Mr. StĂ¼cke said, and made fun of them.
They began with three sheep. Now they have a spokesman — Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer of the band Tokio Hotel and a popular German influencer — a network of slaughterhouses and farmers who are happy to sell their non-procreating rams and a relationship with a Spanish mill that spins the wool into yarn. (Because the gay flock is made up of a variety of sheep species, including Brown Mountain sheep, Coburg Fox sheep and Shropshire sheep, the wool needed to be treated by a specialist mill.)
 |
| The machine used to process the wool on Mr. StĂ¼cke’s farm was built at the turn of the 19th century. |
 |
| A store interior. Dark green and gray hoodies hang on a rack in the mid-ground surrounded by shelves of folded garments. |
All of the goods in the farm shop are made of wool from Mr. StĂ¼cke’s sheep.
They also have an etail store that sells patches and caps with the proceeds going to L.G.B.T.Q. charities, as well as sheep sponsorships.
“It’s a triple win,” Ms. Leytes said. “The community wins, the sheep win, the farm wins.”
What Rainbow Wool did not have until Grindr got involved, however, was global reach. That was why, in mid-2024, Ms. Leytes messaged Mr. Pineiro, telling him their story. (At that point, Mr. StĂ¼cke had never heard of Grindr.)
“I instantly thought this is something we need to be involved in,” Mr. Pineiro said. Grindr enlisted Mr. Schmidt, who visited Mr. StĂ¼cke and his sheep earlier this year.
The two men bonded over farm life — Mr. Schmidt also grew up in an agricultural family, albeit in the American Midwest — and being isolated as a young gay person. When Mr. StĂ¼cke talks about the visit, he tears up. He tends to get emotional when describing the support he has begun to experience after years of feeling ostracized.
“It just means so much that someone who is so far away and so famous and coming from such a different world is taking the moment to visit the sheep and to do something with our wool,” he said, wiping his eyes.
Gladiators, Gym Teachers and a Pool Boy
What exactly Mr. Schmidt decided to do with the wool — all 30 boxes of yarn that arrived from Germany — might have surprised Mr. StĂ¼cke.
“I really wanted to lean into the gay,” Mr. Schmidt said.
He was sitting in his studio in Los Angeles, a warehouse space that looks like a cross between a metalhead’s workshop and the costume department at the MGM Grand. He was wearing a faded INXS T-shirt and black jeans, a collection of studded silver bracelets on each wrist. Along one wall were boxes of crystals; along another, wrenches and cutters. Various posters of his famous clients in his designs were scattered around the walls.
When he isn’t knitting, Michael Schmidt is the couturier of choice for rock divas like Lisa, left, performing at Coachella, and Doja Cat, serenading the audience at Vogue World in Los Angeles.Credit...Frazer Harrison/Getty Images (Lisa); Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images (Doja Cat)
Upstairs there is a loft-like office of sorts where Mr. Schmidt keeps some of his favorite pieces, like the techno fairy look he made for Doja Cat to wear for her performance at the end of the recent Vogue World celebration, though many are in the Swarovski museum in Austria or an actual museum. LACMA, for example, has the 3-D-printed gown Mr. Schmidt created for Dita Von Teese in 2013 that happened to have been the first fully articulated 3-D-printed gown ever made.
Now, alongside the metal cocktail frocks was a rack holding a lot of cable knits. Given carte blanche for the show, Mr. Schmidt had decided to focus on the most clichĂ©d gay archetypes: the pool boy, the gym teacher, the rock star. Every piece, including red, white and blue Speedo-style briefs, has been hand-knit by Mr. Schmidt and Suss Cousins (author of “Hollywood Knits”) or, in the case of accessories like a gladiator’s sword and a pizza boy’s pizza, crocheted. If the Village People did their own version of “Magic Mike,” this is what they might wear.
“People tend to notice things that are sexy,” Mr. Schmidt said. “They gravitate toward that, especially if there is humor involved. So I thought, ‘Well, that’s a good way to draw the eyeball, which gets you to the story.’”
The concept is high camp, but if you strip away the story line and just focus on the garments, what you see is essentially a line of kind of preppy knit polos, shorts and robes. One with commercial potential. The clothes function on the level of both costume — Mr. Pineiro said that Grindr may take the originals on tour next year — and product. Mr. Schmidt said he was considering showing the buyers at Maxfield, the high-end Los Angeles boutique, some pieces and selling some on his own etail site, with the proceeds going to benefit the farm. (He already sponsors a ram.)
Two looks from Mr. Schmidt's Grindr x Rainbow Wool collection: the rock star and the motorcycle dude. Every piece is knit, even the microphone.Credit...Ziv Sade
“It’s a very good, strong wool,” Mr. Schmidt said. “It has a nice, luxurious hand to it, and it feels good on the body.”
At the very least, Mr. Schmidt is hoping that by getting the word out, farmers in different countries will be inspired to adopt Mr. StĂ¼cke’s approach and rescue their own flocks that might otherwise be sent to a slaughterhouse.
“This is the time to stand up for human rights and animal rights,” Mr. Schmidt said. “This is a really difficult period we’re living through.”
And though Mr. StĂ¼cke himself will not be at the collection’s unveiling (his husband was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, and he has to remain with him in Germany), the show pretty much makes his point for him. Its title: “I Wool Survive.”
Comments