Unisex Custom Suits Are What We do
"I'm not one for gender or sexual absolutism in the main; I fully support and engage in the spectrum.”
- Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent)
At Watson Ellis, unisex — or androgynous — custom suits are really what we specialize in. What does that mean? First off, it means that we firmly believe that custom suits, tuxedos and blazers are garments that can and should be worn by all people; they should not just be available to men, as effectively has been the case for too long. In practice it means, for one, that we do not separate our fabric or design options along stereotypical gender lines.
We don’t have separate women’s and men’s design and-or fabric books; there are no designs or fabrics that are specifically for men, and others that are specifically for women at Watson Ellis. Of course, if the client is looking for a suit and fabric that aligns with more conventionally masculine or feminine looks we are more than happy to accommodate them. But we don’t pigeon-hole or stereotype our clients. Instead we listen to them and meet them where they’re at.
All our options are in together — while still being coherently arranged for easy navigation — meaning that any and all fabrics and design options are available to any respective client no matter their gender. It’s how it should be — with those old generic partitions and boundaries dissolved — and we have purposefully curated our options in this unisex way.
It’s not just our fabric and design options that have been curated along more unisex lines at Watson Ellis either. Designing unisex suits has big implications for fit as well. In other words, a unisex look can often mean doing away with more conventional sizing and fitting templates for men and women and offering a more hybrid or deconstructed look instead. Given our endless optionality in terms of how we can fit our suits to our clients’ bodies, we really are able to fit according to more nonbinary and unisex styles. Maybe the best way to illustrate this approach is by giving an example:
A female client came to me recently — let’s call her Alice — wanting a more unisex / androgynous suit. What that meant to HER was that she wanted the jacket not to conform with her trim yet very busty upper half at all. So what we did was to eliminate the bust darts and make the side seams straight so that nothing would curve into her torso. It was a looser, much more deconstructed fit that didn’t align with what you’d typically see in a woman’s fitted blazer jacket.
Alice’s preference for the bottom half of her suit, however, was for a classic fitted straight leg pant. What we were able to make for her then was a sort of hybrid design, very unique and very personal, and it worked out beautifully.
Above I emphasized that this particular design fitted with Alice’s particular interpretation of what makes an androgynous or unisex suit. The point is that unisex or androgynous or nonbinary suiting is not fixed in place. It’s fluid, a matter of personal taste, a matter of doing away with conventions and finding the look that’s specific to you. It’s a conversation with the client about what a unisex suit design means to THEM, and it’s one we’re always more than willing to have.