How Fitting: design a slow fashion business that fits

A good product is not enough. As much as we’d like to pour our creative time and resources into creating the most beautiful design and exquisitely crafted product and then let it sell itself, it just doesn’t. In fashion business, the job doesn’t stop when the garment is produced. Marketing it is just as important. And that job actually starts before the product even exists.

For some designers, it might seem counterintuitive to think about the marketing and business first, but for Ann Simmons, it came naturally. After working in merchandising and brand marketing at iconic heritage lifestyle brands, she founded her own label – Annie Ozark. Before designing anything, Ann thought about the lifestyle and marketing concept of her brand. In episode 138 of How Fitting®, she shares how this brand story is woven throughout each aspect of her collection’s design and development – including that of the Mulberry Denim Overalls.

Annie Ozark founder Ann Simmons was raised in the Arkansas Ozarks with a bent toward design, Americana, and all things vintage. Her mother and grandmother taught her the difference between a garment made for the season and one crafted to be passed down – a distinction that now shapes every piece she makes.

After studying Fashion Merchandising in college, she built a career in apparel and retail. Her time at two iconic heritage brands, Ralph Lauren and Wrangler, inspired her to be the architect of her own label, Annie Ozark.

The brand was born where the American South meets the Midwest, in the folds of the Ozark Mountains. It offers women’s pieces for everyday living: overalls, work shirts, and bandanas, all designed with equal parts femininity and sturdiness, and built to outlast a single season.

What we learn about fit in this episode:

Fitting the people

How the Ozarks lifestyle influences every part of Annie Ozark

How Ann balances fitting herself versus fitting other women in her target market

Referencing vintage clothing when designing for the modern woman

Fitting the performance

The unexpected ways that longevity plays a role in Ann’s design choices

How Ann responds to trends in her brand and designs

Fitting the purpose

Why Ann created the story and world for Annie Ozark before she designed any clothing

The Americana niche that Ann found was missing in fashion

Fitting the production

What Ann learned from producing her first collection that she is bringing into the development of future seasons

Balancing cost and quality in production

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Annie Ozark website

Annie Ozark Instagram

Annie Ozark LinkedIn

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If you run a slow fashion brand, you’ve probably experienced this. You saw how wasteful the fashion industry can be and vowed to run your brand differently. You want to pursue quality over quantity, sustainable materials and practices, fair labor, and avoid over-production. But how does this slow fashion intent meet the reality of factory MOQs, wash tests, and production costs for a new brand? Plus, as the brand grows, is there a scale where a slow fashion brand is no longer slow fashion?

These are all questions Arianna Levesque considers for her brand Triplicity. Arianna and her triplet sisters create versatile, chic pieces meant for a long-lasting capsule wardrobe. In episode 137, hear what slow fashion values Arianna prioritized as Triplicity started out, how she’s planning for the brand’s future growth, and how these goals impacted decisions for the Adelaide Adjustable Drawstring Pant.

Triplicity was founded by Arianna Levesque, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology. Arianna began her career designing for a fast fashion company and eventually realized she wanted to do things differently.

She saw hundreds of styles produced each month in poor fabrics and likely unethical conditions, in trendy designs that would not carry over to the next year. It felt wasteful, and she wanted to offer styles that were higher quality, and could help people build a capsule wardrobe that they could wear for years to come, which would reduce waste, save people money in the long run, and make deciding what to wear easier.

Inspired by growing up as an identical triplet and sharing clothes with her two sisters, Arianna developed a passion for designing basics with extra functional details that make her designs versatile, with flexible sizing on many of the styles. These features turn timeless basics into unique, adaptable pieces.

What we learn about fit in this episode:

Fitting the people

How sharing clothes with her sisters growing up helps Arianna design capsule wardrobe pieces

How Arianna incorporates adjustable features in each piece without cluttering the simplicity of the designs

Fitting the performance

The debate between natural and synthetic fibers and where Triplicity landed on their materials

How the flexible designs are made for the lifestyle of the Triplicity customer

Fitting the purpose

How Triplicity follows a slow fashion approach

Why sustainability probably isn’t the biggest selling point for your product

Fitting the production

Why Triplicity doesn’t follow a traditional fashion production calendar

What Arianna envisions for Triplicity’s production model to scale the brand without giving up slow fashion values

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Triplicity website

Triplicity Instagram

Triplicity TikTok

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As entrepreneurs, we didn’t start businesses to create a job that we hate. In fact, for most of us, it is quite the opposite. We want our work to be fulfilling. But we also want it to pay the bills and not burn us out. So how do we build a business that is both fun and financially stable? That offers both creative confidence and commercial control? Where the day-to-day process feels magical, but also manageable?

These are the kinds of questions that underlie all of our businesses and impact how sustainable running the business actually is. Ceilidh has experienced this first hand over the ten years she’s been running her brand BillyNou. What started as a natural dyeing hobby, became a maker business. As the brand grew, she realized both the strengths of her creative process and the limitations of her business model.

In episode 136, Ceilidh shares how she’s aligning her product offering with the content she already loves to share and how the Original Overalls she started with still embody the magic she wants the BillyNou community to experience.

Ceilidh Chaplin is a British designer and the founder of BillyNou, a slow fashion brand based in Provence in the south of France, focusing on unique, simple, statement pieces coloured with natural pigments and flowers.

Born out of a desire for comfort and sustainability, BillyNou clothing is low impact and easy to wear. There is a strong focus on low impact fibers and using natural dyes to colour garments made with vintage and antique French linen. Most pieces are made slowly, from start to finish in her small atelier bridging the gap between fashion and craft.

Ceilidh describes the natural dyes she works with as “living colours” having a charm and personality very unlike chemical dyes and offers natural dye workshops and tutorials in person and on line. She communicates her story and showcases her brand in collaboration with her partner, through high quality and visually beautiful content, encouraging people to consider their relationship to fast fashion and over consumption whilst also feeling they have stepped into a magical floral universe.

What we learn about fit in this episode:

Fitting the people

What surprises Ceilidh about the women who buy BillyNou

Why listening to her audience led Ceilidh to start teaching workshops

Fitting the performance

What makes some styles staples that sell for years or decades

Fitting the purpose

How BillyNou’s Original Overalls embody the brand’s values

Why natural dyeing is a big part of the BillyNou brand and a big reason why customers buy from BillyNou

How the new natural dyeing course that Ceilidh teaches is making her business more sustainable

Fitting the production

How Ceilidh balances control and consistency with creativity in production

The moment Ceilidh realized that the content she was sharing online and what she was selling weren’t aligned

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

BillyNou website

BillyNou Instagram

BillyNou Youtube

BillyNou email

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We’re told in fashion business that your brand’s patterns are your IP, don’t let anyone else have access to them. It is true that your patterns are one of the most legally protectable aspects of your brand’s unique fit and design aesthetic, but is gatekeeping patterns really necessary for fashion business success?

Today’s guest, Megan McCullough took the opposite approach for her brand The Sample Room. 100% of styles are available as both the finished garment and the sewing pattern. Not only that, but Meg designs each pattern and style to be upcycled so that the final garment is not its final form. The unique business model means The Sample Room operates half way between an apparel company and an indie pattern company.

In episode 135, we talk about the reasoning behind her decision to sell her patterns and ask the question: ‘Is there any financial benefit to working with upcycled materials?’. It’s an interesting conversation about business, fit, circular design, and more. Hear how this all fits together in her signature Workwear Jacket.

Meg McCullough is a clothing designer and the founder of The Sample Room, a circular fashion brand focused on designing garments that can be remade, repaired, and eventually returned to the earth.

She also runs Studio M, a freelance apparel design studio where she helps small brands design and tech pack clothing. With over a decade in the fashion industry, her work focuses on better design, natural materials, and clothing made to last.

What we learn about fit in this episode:

Fitting the people

The Sample Room customers’ response when she designed the Workwear Jacket to be upcycled

Why Megan shifted from using GOTS certified cotton to upcycling garments in her fashion brand

What The Sample Room’s fit testing process looks like given that they sell both garments and patterns

How Megan balances fitting each individual fit model versus fitting her customer across the board

How Megan keeps the fit and sizing consistent across her fashion brand while working with a variety of fit testers

Fitting the performance

The regional lifestyle that influenced the amount of ease in the Workwear Jacket

How The Sample Room’s different income streams fit together in the business

Fitting the purpose

Why Megan sells The Sample Room patterns as well as finished garments

How Megan designs her patterns so that the garment can be upcycled

Fitting the production

The production costs of using upcycled versus production using virgin materials

How Megan handled conversations with her factory when there was pushback on the sustainable way she wanted her apparel manufactured

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

The Sample Room website

The Sample Room Instagram

The Sample Room Youtube

Meg’s email

Meg’s LinkedIn

Circular Factory biodegradable trims

Clo3D fashion design software

Optitex patternmaking software

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It’s an art, and a science. And something we don’t talk about enough in fashion. What do the physical properties of the fabric mean for the physical support of the body? We can read the info on the fabric header like the fiber content, stretch percentage, knit or weave structure, and gsm weight, but do we know how to use those to our advantage to achieve the look and feel we want in a garment?

The data is structured, but the answers are squishy. Today’s guest, Karen Poirier, proved it is possible to engineer a garment – using the physics, fabric properties, and seam structure – for a feeling. Her brand, Embargo, re-engineers support for full-busted women with bra-alternatives that prioritize comfort and wellbeing. In episode 134, we talk about the engineering that went into their Full Support Bra-Free Top and discover what good fit looks like for Embrago.

Karen Poirier, the visionary designer behind Embrago (em-BRA-go), is transforming women’s fashion with her innovative and sustainable approach. Embrago is more than just a clothing line; it’s a movement towards ethical and compassionate living that empowers women to embrace a minimalist fashion footprint.

For Karen, sustainability means creating multifunctional pieces that adapt to the natural changes in a woman’s body. After years of managing a fuller bust through the changes of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and midlife, she dedicated herself to developing a bra-alternative that supports overall health and comfort without compromising on style.

Her patented Body Responsive Fit™ system uses a new approach to built-in bust support that feels like a gentle embrace and ensures a perfect fit every day. This re-imagined system eliminates the pain and discomfort caused by traditional bras and automatically adapts to a woman’s body changes as she experiences hormone and weight fluctuations, from pre- to post-menopause. Embrago’s designs are crafted to be versatile, reducing the need for excess consumption.

Each piece is ethically produced in small batches, using the softest organic cotton and high-quality materials that prioritize both the planet and personal well-being. Karen’s mission is clear: to empower women to feel confident and comfortable, while also benefitting their health and the environment. Through Embrago, Karen is not only reshaping fashion categories but also transforming the way women think about getting dressed, encouraging mindful choices for a more sustainable future.

What we learn about fit in this episode:

Fitting the people

How Embrago creates support without restriction for full-busted women

The moment Karen knew that the product was finished

The mindset shift that happens when women start wearing Embrago

Fitting the performance

Why Karen focused on seams in a market category that typically favors seamless construction 

How to use the grainline of the fabric strategically for the garment’s function

Fitting the purpose

How Embrago helps women break free from the social pressure to hide or compress a larger chest

Why Karen started Embrago in the first place

Fitting the production

The factors that went into Embrago’s pricing

The fit-testing process for this innovative product

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Embrago website

Embrago Instagram

Embrago Youtube

Embrago email

Karen’s LinkedIn

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