Feminist Founder Feature: Finnegan Shepard of Both&
Finnegan Shepard is the founder and CEO of Both&. In his process of self discovery as a transmasculine person, Both& was born. Instead of designing in a vacuum, Both& is working directly with it’s community to shape a brand that answers to the needs and desires of nonbinary fashion.
Finnegan is a writer, classicist, and entrepreneur with 1/3 of a PhD in philosophy and 3/4s of an MFA in fiction. He has recently finished a short story collection entitled Tilt. New work is forthcoming from The Berkeley Review and The Dublin Review.
Discover Finnegan’s founder story…
Q: What sparked your interest to start Both&?
Finnegan: As a transmasculine person, I’ve spent my life navigating a fashion world that is entirely based off of the binary. When I was healing from top surgery I started wondering whether it would be possible to build our own system of proportions, sizes and fits. Ultimately, what I knew from my experience and what I found to be the case in all of my interviews was that people in the transmascu/gnc/nonbinary community can never trust clothing will fit--sometimes it does, but it’s never something we can count on. That was really what I wanted to change. To create something that was in direct conversation with the community, ever-evolving and improving, and that put our bodies, challenges, and desires first.
Q: What do you love about what you do?
Finnegan: The fact that I get to hear people’s stories day in day out, that every day is different, dynamic, and challenging, and that what we are doing is fundamentally creative and helps people feel seen, safe, and empowered.
Q: how do you continue to get inspired or come up with new ideas?
Finnegan: The world is a wondrous place, if you pay attention to it. I live by the maxim “the best way to be interesting is to be interested.”
Q: Describe what it’s like to be a founder in 3 words.
Finnegan: Dynamic. Primordial. Empowering.
Q: A lot of brands are working towards sustainability goals, what are your goals? what does sustainability mean to you?
Finnegan: Our goal is to continue doing our best to balance sustainably and ethically sourced clothes with evidence-based designs and accessible prices. We are trying to do a lot at once, but thus far I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve. There’s a lot of hype/marketing around sustainability in the fashion world, but one of the biggest things you can do is work with vertically integrated manufacturers, so you aren’t sourcing fabric in one place, shipping it somewhere else for development, shipping some production to one place and the majority elsewhere, so on and so forth. We do everything in one place and try our best to minimize the amount of shipping involved in development. That means a lot of challenging zoom call fittings, but I try to see it as another opportunity to be innovative rather than a constant headache.
Q: How do you use the power of your platform to empower your community?
Finnegan: I’m a big believer in the power of story. I’ve been a writer my whole life, and it was clear to me from the start of Both& that a core tenet of what we do would always be to create a space of voice and visibility for the community. That’s what our photojournalism series is all about--our interviews inform our design process as well, but they serve an important function in and of themselves. I fundamentally believe in the importance of open dialogue and learning from diverse experience and world views, and I think we live in an age where, despite an increased interest in trans/nonbinary experiences, we tend to have pretty calcified narratives in mainstream media. I really want to open that box up, and be a small part in a much bigger project of nurturing space for the whole breadth of experience our community has.
Q: Since you first launched, has representation in culture shifted?
“I think that it’s true we are living in a ‘trans moment,’ and every day new stories are being covered. To me, it’s a question of how those stories are framed, who is telling them, and who the audience is.”
Q: What advice would you give to someone on their journey of discovering their identity?
Finnegan:
Be curious, always.
Reach out--it never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful people there are in the world who are so happy to mentor, offer words of wisdom, and point you towards good resources.
Be patient with yourself and others.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
Finnegan: Common sense. That may sound like a cop out, and I don’t consider myself an expert in feminism, but sometimes the complexity of arguments around it boggle my mind, when what it comes down to for me is such a basic human principle of treating one another with respect and not fearing (and therefore struggling against) that which is different from ourselves.
