I find there’s a particular kind of courage required when getting dressed in the morning.
Most people don’t think about it that way. You open your wardrobe, you pick something out, you leave the house. Simple. But for a lot of us—for trans and queer folx, or anyone who has ever felt like their body or their sense of self didn’t quite match what the world expected to see—getting dressed is never just getting dressed. It’s a negotiation. With yourself. With the mirror. With every space you’re about to walk into.
We have to ask: will I be okay in this?
I’m the founder of Kinfolx, a sustainable fashion label that is designing clothes for trans women and femme-leaning, gender non-conforming folx. To be clear, while I have a distinct vision for Kinfolx’s designs, I’m no fashionista.
I didn’t start Kinfolx because I’m engrossed by following the latest trends, binging fashion-related reality TV shows, or pouring over the tabloid photos of the latest red-carpet event.
I did so because I got tired:
Tired of having to constantly work around what is currently out there. None of which is designed with us in mind.
Tired of changing rooms feeling like a test, and having to give up by the upteenth item that doesn’t fit. Walking away with such a dent to my confidence I want to hide under my hoodie.
Tired of sizing systems designed around a body that isn’t just ‘outside the mainstream’ for women’s clothing, but where there are deep, structural differences that aren’t accommodated.
Tired of having to accept whatever ‘fit’, rather than the things I want to wear.
Tired of ‘gender neutral’ brands that seem to just jump on a bandwagon to rebadge baggy, shapeless tees and shorts and jeans. Or plus size dresses that either have curves in, or accentuate, all the wrong places, making me completely self-conscious and feeling out of place.
Tired of the low-grade vigilance that comes with shopping while visibly queer.
But here’s the thing I kept coming back to: the problem isn’t just that the industry doesn’t have much incentive to care. It’s that it doesn’t know. It has never had to learn.
The expertise that trans and queer people carry about our own bodies—what works, what doesn’t, why a seam sits wrong or a silhouette falls flat—that knowledge exists.
It lives in our communities, in the drag world, in the conversations we have with each other in fitting rooms and reddit and discord and group chats and late-night rabbit holes with friends. It just hasn’t been taken seriously as design knowledge. That’s something I want to change.
Kinfolx is a fashion brand built from the inside out to design for trans and queer people, by someone who knows what it actually feels like to need it. Not just to be stylish. But to feel safe. To feel whole. To feel confident. To feel truly me.
What makes it different isn’t just intention. It’s method. We’re grounding our work in research: in anatomy, in how our bodies change in response to hormone therapy over time, in the technical traditions of communities who have been solving these problems creatively—sometimes brilliantly—for decades.
And we’re building it with our community, not just for. Treating lived experience as the expert knowledge it is, letting it shape our design decisions from the first sketch onwards.
We’re still building. We’re a ways away from launching, yet. But this Substack is where the thinking happens, not just where I can share the work in progress, but where you, and the trans community, can have a voice in what we do and how we do things. Before the proverbial ‘doors’ open.
Dressed to be Here emerged from thinking about a campaign idea. But the more I sat with it, the more I felt it was something else. Something of a statement of purpose.
There’s something deliberately quiet about it. It’s not dressed for success. It’s not aspirational in that relentless, capitalist-optimism kind of way. It’s about being here. Present. Taking up space. Exercising and reinforcing our right to exist. Belonging.
That’s what I want Kinfolx to stand for. Not a fantasy version of yourself you’re working toward, but the right to feel at home in your body and your clothes right now. As you are. Wherever you are in your journey.
The right to be here. Dressed, and undeniably here.
I’ll be posting here regularly. About fashion, about the brand as it comes to life, about the politics of clothing and who gets to feel comfortable in their own skin. About the industry and what needs to change. About the craft of it: the research, the pattern-making, the specific technical problems that nobody has bothered to solve because nobody profitable enough to matter was asking. About community, and what it means to build something for people who have so often been left to figure it out alone.
Some posts will be practical: styling tips, fit guides, the kind of specific knowledge that makes a real difference when you’re standing in a shop wondering if something will actually work on your body. Some will be personal. Some will go deep into the design process: the sketches and the dead ends and the small moments when something finally works the way it’s supposed to. Some will probably be a bit of all three.
I also hope to be sharing conversations. With stylists and makers and retailers who have been quietly building trans-inclusive practice in the industry, with people from the drag world whose technical knowledge of silhouette and proportion is simply extraordinary, with members of our own community who have agreed to open their wardrobes and share what they love and what they’ve learned.
My hope is that these won’t be just ‘interviews’. That, instead, they form part of how Kinfolx is being designed. That the things people tell us shape the things we make.
And, perhaps most of all, I view this as a space for conversation, not a broadcast. We hope you will see how what you share here matters. In creating a venture that serves your needs and our community.
If something resonates, or something’s missing, if I get something wrong, or you have knowledge that should be in the room… I want to hear it!
If you’re trans, non-binary, gender-diverse, or queer, this is for you, directly and without caveat. If you’re an ally who wants to understand more, or work in fashion and want to do better, you’re absolutely welcome, too.
We’re dressed to be here. I hope you’ll join us.