When Sarah Carson launched Leota, a 10-year old inclusive fashion brand, the queer founder wondered if being open about “being an inclusive, LGBTQ-owned brand” was “worth the risk of potentially losing customers?” She’d been out personally since she was 19 and kept her personal life quiet.
“I’m not sure how much of it was sexism and how much of it was homophobia, but fear of both kept me compartmentalizing,” she says. “I found my covering to be exhausting and it made me angry after a while. It struck me as