FIn April 2020, transgender innegan shepard underwent top-of-the-line surgery. He began looking for a suit that would allow him to show off the new manly body he had acquired during his healing. The options that he found online weren’t enough. “Everything was really Pride-branded or super-functional, [and made it look] like I wanted to go rock climbing,” says Shepard, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was, until 2018, a graduate student focusing on political philosophy and creative writing. He had in mind stylish, flattering swim trunks with more room through the seat and legs.
It was then that the idea of a clothing brand specifically made for trans men began to take root. Shepard conducted informational interviews to gather data about the community of trans people. He also asked his contacts questions regarding their relationships with clothing in order to determine what kind of clothes they needed. “I started with the three trans people I knew, and then asked them to introduce me to any trans people they knew,” Shepard, 30, says of the process that quickly ballooned into countless interviews.
He launched an Instagram account in October 2020 that he describes as “a kind of Humans of New York for the trans and non-binary community,” and set up a survey investigating other people’s feelings about clothing and fit. The survey was completed by thousands of non-binary and trans followers. 99.4% said they have never found clothing that fits properly.
So with $5,000 in savings and what he describes as “an enormous amount of chutzpah”, Shepard got to work building Both&, a clothing line for his community’s needs, from scratch. Early on, his crude approach to the design process involved patching together three separate T-shirts into a Frankenstein’s monster-like creation to attain the right combination of length, width and fabric. But when Amiram Assouline, a creative director with 30 years’ experience working at fashion brands such as Elie Tahari and Catherine Malandrino, came onboard, things began to smooth out. Assouline would serve as Both&’s creative director and co-founder. His buy-in helped facilitate connections with factories that perhaps wouldn’t have given such a small brand a second look.
“The reality is that most clothing is scaled to fit 5% of the population,” Shepard says. While separate categories exist for plus-size and maternity clothing, anyone else whose body isn’t served by clothing adhering to the lithe proportions of a fit model is typically overlooked. “I think a lot of people have an association with fashion as this shallow, consumeristic thing, but as a trans person, I think that clothing is one of the most powerful tools of translation we have.”
Was this your first vision of the clothing?
Just wanted high-quality and stylish basics in proportions that would fit trans male bodies. We’re a brand that is led by fit, not style, so that has really guided what we’ve designed. T-shirts that are too long for trans people tend to be way too big. The shoulders and hips are too large, while the neck is too low. With swim trunks, they’re usually too tight through the thighs and too long. I’m sure there is a swim trunk out there that happens to fit my body, but the problem is there’s no good way to find it. You are shopping for [trans people] Like a shot in darkness. There are a lot of things you can try, but maybe it works for you. [Clothing that] The structure for women is curvy, feminine and very structured. For men it is more rectangular and narrow. Regardless of whether or not you’ve been medically adjusted, hormones may have an impact on your fat distribution, muscle distribution, and bone structure.
Which challenges were you faced during the process of designing?
Design hasn’t been our biggest challenge as a brand: it’s capital. Raise money to support a direct consumer campaign [DTC] company, for a market most investors don’t understand, with a first-time founder who’s trans and lives in the middle of nowhere is a challenge. Of course there were a few hiccups in the beginning: we got an initial prototype back from a factory and they just hadn’t followed our tech pack because they’d never seen a shirt in those proportions before. It was nipped at the waist so it had a very feminine look. But now the factories understand what we’re doing. We’re not one of those DTC startups who raised $5m in their first year. It’s been more like $10,000 here, $25,000 there. We’re looking for a couple more angel investors to come on board at the moment.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of founding Both& so far?
I don’t go a single day without someone reaching out to me to say, ‘I put on this shirt, looked in the mirror and saw myself for the first time.’ Honestly, the community feedback is what keeps me going. Building a fashion company in the middle of a pandemic with no connections in the industry feels like an uphill battle, and it’s those comments and reviews that keep me going and make me realize over and over again how important this work is.
What’s something you would like to achieve with your business that you haven’t yet?
For the next two years, the plan calls for rapid expansion in partnerships and collaborations with other brands. We’ve got the wardrobe of essentials out there, and now it’s about adding more flair, more style pops, more statement pieces through limited edition capsule drops. I think we can and should expand outside of clothing into other verticals – for example, footwear. Shoes don’t fit a lot of trans men, and it doesn’t require huge innovation, it’s just making men’s shoes in smaller sizes.