FASHION SUITS

Fashion Suits

They didn’t fit into the classic binary retail environment. People thought if they’re open-minded enough to hire Rae then they’ll put a suit on me, even though I have a bust and hips and the classic female anatomy. People want to wear suits and feel great about them.So, we just said yes to everybody. It wasn’t a mission. When Rae came he never said ‘I have an idea for making non-binary suits for my community.’ And it opened up the floodgates after the New Yorker wrote about us on Thanksgiving morning in 2013. I don’t think I realized how big the whole thing was until I woke up to 300 emails from all over the world. One came from a parent in Paris who said 'I think my 12-year-old child will transition and I want to thank you for existing. I know my child will be OK because of companies like yours.

FASHION SUITS

It’s funny because it’s not at all different but super different at the same time. If you look at the origins of a suit, it comes from a military uniform. If you flip the lapels up it looks like formal wear worn by most armed forces, like the US Marines. The idea is that it’s very angular and sort of makes a person present and feel like they have armor on. And a lot of our clients are triggered by certain parts of their bodies. When the average straight cisgendered person looks in the mirror and tries on a suit, they check if it fits. When our clients look they ask ‘is this masculine or feminine?’ And this adds a new layer.

We work with clients who have a bust and the classic female curvature. When they go to women's section and buy a female jacket, instead of making them feel protected like armor with a straight silhouette and angular lines they find curvy feminine clothing. Instead of making them protected it makes them feel vulnerable. In a sense, it’s just a suit and it’s about getting the right measurements. On a more important level, it’s about making sure our clients feel heard. We map their bodies out and make a suit to make them feel strong.

It’s very personal. When we meet people we talk for a good 20 minutes about how they feel about their bodies before we even get into the siting process.

For example, let’s take Superman. He has a big chest and a tiny waist. He is the paradigm of masculinity. But if you put that shape on many of our clients they would say 'this feels very feminine'. So what we do is reverse that and bind the chest to reduce it. We give more room in lower rib cage so the suit has less of an hourglass shape. And when you buy a jacket from the women’s section you notice that the hips are bigger than the hip bone to emphasis curvature. But we make our hips three inches smaller than a hip bone to ensure the jacket stays very close to the body. We try to reduce everything that might be very curved and straighten it out. But that doesn't mean making a loose suit that doesn't fit.

Most recently we’ve seen a large influx of straight cist people wanting the same service which is interesting. I think what we’re learning is that the way someone presents and their essence will come through no matter what they wear. If we have a very masculine client and they put on the feminine suit they still look masculine presenting to the world. If someone is non-binary and they put on men’s clothing and they are smaller or it doesn't fit, instead of gender neutralizing them it hyper-genders them and makes them feel like they don't belong.

There are so many. We have clients who have put off getting married for years because they don't want to look stupid or they have just given up. Clothing is the bane of their existence. A big thing for people is they will feel that ‘OK the suit is going to fix me and it's the elixir to my gender challenges’. And the truth is it doesn't. It’s just a suit and people put a lot of weight on it. It’s just a milestone on a journey, and a lot of people find that very overwhelming. You’re still human and the 35 years of socializing up to that point are still there. We want to have a store where people can be open about getting top surgery [where the breasts are removed] or stapling their stomach or getting testosterone treatment.

The funny thing is that by being open to LGBTQ it has actually opened us up to all kinds of other markets. We also worked with the Innocence Project, which is an initiative in the US to exonerate incarcerated people who were wrongfully convicted. We have a lot of poor people in the US and overzealous prison system. Now they are getting clothing that fit perfectly and they become anything but a number. The whole suit is an essay to them and it helps them gain re-entry into society and the job force. And they have their own triggers and insecurities. We are taking lessons from LGBTQ people and applying it to others.

The suit has to fit. The color doesn't matter, the pattern doesn't matter. You can have the nicest fabric and pattern but if it doesn't fit you won't wear it. What we do is focus on the shoulders. A big thing with gender-neutral clothing is that people will buy from the men’s section but anatomically they have the bone structure of females. Compared to males with same body mass they will be two inches narrower. Many of them have a bust and so they have to figure out how to get the jacket to close. If they go to the men's section and get the right chest size the shoulders are always too big, so to close it’s the case of getting a size up and up. Then the shoulders get bigger.

So, focus on the shoulders, the length of the jacket and the sleeves. If smaller people come to us and can't afford a suit or don’t have time, we tell them to go to children’s suit stores. I wear J Crew boy’s shirts all the time and I own a custom suit company. Our philosophy is not just towards clothing but of openness. This carries through other business. A lot of people say 'I don’t want to work with LGBTQ people because I’m not from the community.'  The truth is that it’s not scary. I strongly believe you don’t have a Ph.D. in gender studies to make people feel great! In the same way, you don’t have to be a Tran’s person to be a Tran’s person’s doctor. To help someone we just have to treat humans like humans. All of us have unique requirements and some happen to be Trans.