‘Not a real job’: 29yo has last laugh
A tailor who has turned social media’s heads with her incredibly bold suits has revealed how she got into the male dominated industry.
A tailor who has turned social media’s heads with her incredibly bold suits has revealed how she got into the male dominated industry.
Taylor Jones, 29, grew up sewing, with her grandmother teaching her when she was just 11 years old.
“I would make my own clothes and my friends’ clothes but once I got to graduating high school my parents, being quite conservative, said ‘fashion is not a real job’ and ‘you should go and get a proper job’,” Ms Jones told news.com.au.
“So, I went into real estate. I hated it and I found I was drawn back to sewing and fashion.”
Working in real estate, she needed suits for her job. Feeling drawn back to that world she asked her tailor to take her on and teach her how to tailor.
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She said it was a welcoming community, in comparison to real estate where women had to “claw their way” to the top, adding tailors had “welcomed her with open arms”.
She spent two years working for a menswear label and when they wouldn’t budge on going into womenswear, Ms Jones declined the US contract she had been offered and started her own business — Taylor Alexandra.
It opened for business earlier this year.
“Even though I was working in a menswear business, I was still designing my own suits,” she said.
“I was like, ‘These men are just not appreciating the amount of effort I am putting in everyday. So, I just started posting silly little videos of my outfit online everyday.
“Then I had women slowly start contacting me, saying, ‘We want you to make suits’ and I kept declining.”
The videos paid off, with Ms Jones earning over 100,000 followers on TikTok alone.
In her clips, she walks people through her outfit of the day. A recent video showed her wearing a charcoal three-piece, while others have seen Ms Jones in a bold orange number, as well as sage and red.
When she made the leap to start her business, it essentially “built itself over night” as she had hoarded the contact details of the women who had previously reached out to her.
She launched Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane trunk shows — which is essentially working out of hotel rooms in various cities — and they were sold out overnight.
Four months later Perth, New York and Los Angeles have been added to the cities she caters to.
She said the reach that she has had is amazing, and it all comes down to how genuine she is in her content.
Ms Jones said she was drawn to suiting specifically because of the experience that it gives the buyer, saying it often gives people the opportunity to be themselves and embrace confidence.
“It’s just the power that clothing can have,” she said.
The majority of her clients are women, around 80 per cent, and she said this is likely due to the fact that not a lot of women get to take advantage of suiting.
She said, broadly speaking, that when suiting men it’s a little more “transactional” as they are often getting suits because they have to — for work or for an event. With women, she said women are more of an “emotional buyer”.
“They’re coming in for the experience. They want to sit down, they want to talk about the fabrics, the colour, how it’s going to make them feel, what their friends think,” she said.
“They’re buying a suit more so to feel good and have a very beautiful piece in their wardrobe.”
She said that due to the fact that suiting is such a personal and tailored experience — everything from the fabric to the style — cost is a massive variant between pieces.
Ms Jones said there are a few reasons why more people are drawn to suiting — there has been a big shift where people don’t have to wear it as a formality anymore and styling has changed to a more functional style.
Her biggest fashion tip is to choose what you like, rather than what’s trending, and focusing on garments that are versatile with the existing wardrobe.
Originally published as ‘Not a real job’: 29yo has last laugh
