A Chalet Celebration of Pride

June is Pride month. Let’s celebrate all the colours in the rainbow!

The Progress Pride flag. Designed by American artist Daniel Quasar in 2018.

The “Progress Pride flag” is a reinterpretation of the original “Rainbow Pride flag”  created by Gilbert Baker in 1978 to celebrate members of the gay and lesbian political movement. It comprised eight coloured stripes stacked on top of each other to evoke a rainbow – a universal symbol of hope.

Each colour was assigned a specific meaning: pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit.  A year later the pink and turquoise stripes were dropped owing to a shortage of pink fabric at the time and legibility concerns. This change resulted in the familiar six-colour rainbow flag most commonly seen.

Baker's flag was embraced internationally as the symbol of the LGBTQ community and inspired many designers and activists to create subsequent flags for more specific identities. Today, the number of Pride flags is considerable and their diversity represents the many identities that make up the LGBTQ community. A recent commonality in their design is that because some subgroups are more visible than others, recent pride flag redesigns have consciously sought to increase the representation of discriminated minority identities within the community,

 From one flag reboot to another, the coloured stripes both share the original meanings as well as being imbued with different representations. For Quasar, the light blue, pink and white stripes represent trans and non-binary individuals and the brown and black ones represent marginalised People of Colour (POC) communities. However, the black stripe holds double meaning as it is also intended to recognize those living with AIDS and the stigma and prejudice surrounding them, and those who have been lost to this disease. The arrow points to the right to show forward movement but also illustrates that progress towards inclusivity is still needed.

I thought it fitting to pay my respects to and honour the diversity in our glass community through a Chalet Pride parade.