A shirt and jeans from Alike
Photo: Ryan Segedi

Former womenswear designer Melissa Serpico Kamhout noticed her now-8-year-old twins, Paloma and Valentino, picking up on gender stereotypes from a young age. “My daughter would tell her brother, ‘You can’t wear pink. Pink is for girls.’ I did not like that at all.” Though bright, fun colors appealed to her son, the Wicker Park mom struggled to find such items among boys’ clothing. From that, Alike was born. One of the tenets of the online clothing company, which Serpico Kamhout founded in September with finance industry vet Kaitlin Meyer, is that colors are for everyone, and it’s apparent in everything from the pop-art-inspired cotton T-shirts to the artfully faded jeans accented with fluorescent embroidery. What you won’t see are details often associated with a particular gender, like frills or truck patterns. Alike uses organic cotton and ships in plastic-free mailers, and Serpico Kamhout herself makes the jeans out of vintage denim. As if gender-neutral, sustainably minded clothing weren’t woke enough, there’s also this: A portion of each sale goes to Blessings in a Backpack, a nonprofit that provides weekend food to elementary school students. From $49 for T-shirts and $110 for jeans. alikekids.com