How Fitting: design a slow fashion business that fits

If you are anything like me, you’ve started paying way more attention to the ingredients in our food and realized just how many nasty ingredients are hidden within. If comprehensive ingredient labels existed for clothing, they would be equally shocking. Even in garments labeled as “natural fibers”, there are hidden sources of plastic and chemicals that have a negative effect on our health and the health of our planet.

For Meli and Rensso Hinostroza, this realization turned into curiosity and a deep dive into 100% plastic-free clothing production. The two siblings have started two brands – Arms of Andes and Eco Aya. In episode 133, we go into the nitty gritty details of eliminating all plastic from the clothing they make down to every thread, zipper, button, and fabric finishing and how they had to set up their manufacturing to do it.

Melissa and Rensso Hinostroza are the sibling co-founders of Eco Aya, a plastic-free non-toxic lifestyle brand, and Arms of Andes, home of the world’s only 100% alpaca outdoor apparel. In an industry dominated by synthetic fibers and microplastics, the sibling duo have returned to their roots to offer a high-performance alternative that is entirely natural and biodegradable.

Born in California and raised between the U.S. and Peru, they have spent their lives navigating two worlds, a perspective that allowed them to see how heritage-driven techniques could solve the modern environmental crisis in the global outdoor market.

Meli Hinostroza is the brand’s creative force and strategic visionary. She leads marketing, sales, and the customer experience, ensuring that every campaign reflects their deep-rooted commitment to the planet. For Meli, the mission is to dismantle the industry's reliance on plastics by building a brand that connects people back to nature through sustainable, purposeful design.

Rensso Hinostroza is the operational backbone of the company. With a background in international business, he manages the entire supply chain directly from Peru. He is the guardian of the brand’s transparency, overseeing everything from sourcing raw fibers to final production. A believer in a minimalist approach to adventure, Rensso is dedicated to proving that performance gear doesn't need chemicals or plastics to excel in the world's harshest environments.

Together, Meli and Rensso are bridging the gap between ancestral wisdom and modern technical performance, proving that the future of the outdoors isn't synthetic, it's natural.

This episode explores:

Fitting the customer

Who Meli and Rensso designed Arms of Andes and Eco Aya for

The questions Meli and Rensso wish customers would ask of brands

The questions brands should be asking of their suppliers

Fitting the lifestyle

How the sustainable lifestyle Meli and Rensso grew up with influenced their early business decisions

Why Meli and Rensso decided to bring all their textile and garment production in-house in a single country

The nitty gritty details of how Rensso and Meli got rid of the hidden sources of plastic in their brand’s clothes

Fitting the values

Why Meli and Rensso put so much value (and effort) into making clothes plastic-free

The balance between longevity and biodegradability

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Eco Aya. website

Arms of Andes website

Eco Aya Instagram

Eco Aya email

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The custom fit of bespoke clothing with the efficiency and scale of factory production: this is the sweet spot that so many fashion businesses are aiming for. However, finding this sweet spot can be as difficult as finding a pair of jeans that fits just right. Daniela Rodriguez and Andre Ramirez-Cedeno of Neems Jeans have found both. Traditional manufacturing is still evolving and the technology is still emerging. In episode 132, we look at what is working and what still needs work when it comes to custom clothing production.

Daniela Rodriguez-Firmani and Andre Ramirez-Cedeno are the co-founders of Neems Jeans, a fashion-tech company using AI body-scanning technology to create custom-fit jeans for every body. Both Miami natives and Northwestern graduates, Dani and Andre worked as management consultants before their personal frustrations changed everything: they could never find jeans that fit perfectly.

In 2020, they launched Neems together - armed with zero fashion experience but fierce determination to solve a problem millions face every time they shop for denim. Together, they've scaled Neems into a rapidly growing seven-figure brand serving thousands of customers internationally, challenging the myth of standard sizing while proving that innovation and sustainability can coexist. Their mission: make clothing that fits people, not the other way around.

This episode explores:

Fitting the customer

Why Neems isn’t constrained to fitting one customer niche

The biggest customer segments for Neems and what that says about the fit of off-the-rack options

How Daniela and Andre overcome skepticism from customers

Fitting the lifestyle

The point-of-no-return investment that Daniela and Andre made

How Neems production has evolved through different stages of the business’ life

How Daniela and Andre arrived at the price point for their custom jeans

Fitting the values

The vision and values that keeps them going even when things are hard

The different reasons why customers buy Neems

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Neems Jeans website

Neems Jeans Instagram

Choozr body scanning/measuring technology

Tukatech pattern software and machinery

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If there is one thing that entrepreneurs face every day, it is choices. Some choices are deliberate and planned in advance. Others are made last-minute when something unexpected happens – like a 13 second video going viral when the featured product is already sold out. With every choice, you get to choose the type of life and business you want to run.

This is just what Kelsey Campion has been doing for the past 10 years. She is the founder and Chief Sequin Officer of Fringe + Co and my guest in this episode 131. What started in her spare bedroom, grew into a thriving brand that supports color, celebration, and her local New Orleans community. With each stage of her business – even when the decisions haven’t been so sparkly and fun – Kelsey has chosen to transparently live by her values.

Kelsey Campion is the founder and Chief Sequin Officer of Fringe + Co., a New Orleans–based fashion brand rooted in celebration, color, and community. She started Fringe + Co. over 10 years ago out of her 200-square-foot spare bedroom, building the business from the ground up with creativity, grit, and a belief that getting dressed should feel like a party.

As the brand grew, Kelsey faced a turning point: scaling production without sacrificing her values. Determined to keep manufacturing local and ethical, she partnered with a New Orleans manufacturer for four years. In 2021, a single viral video changed everything — accelerating the business and creating the opportunity to purchase that very manufacturer in 2022.

Today, Kelsey not only produces Fringe + Co. locally, but also manufactures for other brands, helping founders bring their ideas to life while keeping production ethical, transparent, and community-driven. Her work and story have been featured on The Today Show, she’s been scouted by Shark Tank, and she continues to advocate for small-batch manufacturing, creative entrepreneurship, and building businesses that don’t require burning out or going it alone.

This episode explores:

Fitting the customer

How Kesley designs pieces that go beyond parades and special occasions

Why Kelsey is super transparent with her customers about the behind the scenes of her business

Why Kelsey describes herself as a “selfish creative” and how that has served her business

How Kesley makes Fringe + Co more accessible to people despite a higher price point

Fitting the lifestyle

Why Kelsey has been feeling a bit bored in her business right now and what she’s doing to bring creativity back

How going viral forced Kelsey and her team to systematize the business

How the city Fringe is part of (New Orleans) influences the brand

How running a fashion business for over a decade transforms your lifestyle

Fitting the values

The values Kesley will never leave behind as her business grows

How Fringe customers became some of the biggest advocates for Kelsey’s business values

The points where growth can test your values

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Fringe + Co. website

Fringe + Co. Instagram

Fringe Factory Instagram

Kelsey’s email

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We think that offering different sizes is serving our customers, but is it actually? Does standard sizing make it easier for the customer or does it just make it easier for the brand? Rick Levine and Steven Heard have thoughts.

They’ve each run multiple manufacturing businesses in different industries and are currently partners of the made-to-measure development and manufacturing studio ApparelWerks. No matter the business, their goal with product design, fit, and sizing has been the same: make each customer insanely happy. It impacts how they see production, technology, entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, customer relationships, and more. In episode 130, we cover it all.

Steven and Rick were introduced when Rick was looking into body scanning for a problem his daughter, an engineer, was trying to solve. "There's a guy in Portland who's been making customized clothing for decades. He knows all about scanners and measurement."

They discovered a shared appreciation for manufacturing technology, a fascination with old sewing machines, and a view that tech is only a means to an end; their past businesses were focused on making customers happy. Both were also looking for something new and interesting to do, and the result was starting ApparelWerks, a manufacturing and product development studio in Portland creating made-to-measure clothing.

Steven Heard has decades of experience making clothing, starting at the Levi Strauss factory on Valencia Street in San Francisco, at a time when all patterns and samples for the company were still created there. He was a senior pattern-maker for Levi's Dockers brand, and went on to spearhead the world’s first large-scale bespoke jeans production, leveraging body scanning technology to craft custom jeans for thousands of consumers. He founded pattern service bureau Clinton Park, doing garment development and pattern work for numerous national and start-up brands, and developed a reputation for being the go-to patternmaker for denim development. He went on to found Japanese-inspired San Francisco denim and workwear brand Dillon Montara in 2014, and was the development and manufacturing partner behind Portland's Ship John brand.

Rick Levine is the engineering black sheep in a family of artists. His father was a ceramist and designer, making and using tools to create mid-century ceramic tile and lamps on a large scale. Rick spent a lot of his time growing up around clay and machinery. Rick started his career as a producer and editor for film and video, and stepped sideways into programming tools and user interfaces for computer systems. He worked at Sun Microsystems early in its existence, and then at a series of start-ups. In 2006, Rick followed his interest in manufacturing automation to found chocolate brand Sun Cups. He repurposed industrial-scale chocolate techniques to create artisanal, organic, nut-free chocolates and made them available in thousands of stores. In 2013, he and his brother, designer Neil Levine, founded sock company XOAB, focusing on creating comfortable socks with a broad palette of Merino wool and Supima® cotton colors. They created a domestic supply chain, and used modified knitting machines and pattern analysis software to take new designs from sketch to shelf in less than a week, a capability unique in the hosiery industry.

This episode explores:

Fitting the customer

Why the garment won’t fit unless you’ve had a conversation with the customer

The difference between solving fit for your brand versus solving fit for your customer

The advantages and limitations of 3D body scanning for apparel development

How they know when they got the fit right

Fitting the lifestyle

Scaling on-demand production

How one-piece production flow changes the way you see efficiency

How Rick’s and Steven’s background lead to their perspectives on manufacturing

The tools Rick and Steven use to systemetize custom clothing

Fitting the values

Why there’s value in both craft and technology

Why Rick has a “healthy disrespect” for tools

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

ApparelWerks website

Dillon Montara website

ApparelWerks Instagram

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As people in creative fields, many of us can look back and see how our activities and interests as a child led to the work we do today. We may have grown up and grown out of clothes along the way, but some things never change. Creativity and other values that are important to us show up in our adult life through our fashion businesses.

This is certainly true for today’s guest Bergen Anderson. Her brand, Lilla Barn, makes colorful and sustainable clothes for kids and grownups alike.

As a lifelong sewist, Bergen Anderson started Lilla Barn in order to make colorful, genderless, sustainable, baby clothes that stand out in a world of pinks and blues. In the last 12 years, she has grown her brand to include grown-up clothes, accessories, and homegoods including a storefront/studio in Andersonville, Illinois.

Inspired by visual artists who play with color and texture, her work is intended to bring joy, creativity, and individuality into everyday life. Bergen enjoys exploring the overlaps between traditional craft ("women's work"), modern textiles, and functional fine art. As a slow fashion advocate, she believes the personal is political and that our consumer habits and creating habits should align with our values.

This episode explores:

Fitting the customer

Why Bergen designs what she likes even though she is technically no longer her own target customer

Bergen’s process for patternmaking and sizing and its pros and cons for fit

Fitting the lifestyle

The hardest part about hiring a small team for Lilla Barn

The extent that creative habits are intertwined with personal and business lifestyles

The projects Bergen wants to take on in her business once she has a bigger team

How opening a retail space changed Lilla Barn’s business model

Fitting the values

How to communicate brand values in a way that is meaningful and relevant even as the broader culture changes around us

People and resources mentioned in this episode:

Lilla Barn website

Lilla Barn email

Lilla Barn Instagram

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