We were lucky to catch up with Xi Chen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Xi, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

For years, I struggled to find clothes that I loved to wear in my everyday life. The nice clothes I had collected dust in the closet because they were either uncomfortable or impractical, while the comfy ones I wore daily made me feel frumpy and bored. I noticed that almost all of my girlfriends shared the same struggle, and realized that this was happening because cute clothes were largely designed with only special occasions in mind. So what ended up happening is that we had all these glamorous clothes made for a small fraction of our life, but the real needs of our everyday were largely ignored. So I decided to start Sonderlier with the goal to challenge this status quo, and a mission to create clothes to elevate women’s everyday wellbeing.

Xi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I received my training in engineering and had been working as an engineering professor before founding Sonderlier. It seems like a 180 switch to go into fashion from my background, but I actually found that the engineer’s focus on functionality has been really helpful in my design process, and I very much enjoy combining the two worlds in my creations. At Sonderlier, we help women who want to feel confident and presentable everyday but often have little time to get dressed. Unlike existing designer fashion options, our designs focus on everyday functionality in addition to style, and offer women comfortable and versatile staples that are exciting to wear.
I’m super proud to say that we’ve received 100% five-star reviews so far, and our clothes have filled gaps in the daily lives of our customer, like turning working moms who felt like they were “a constant mess” to effortlessly switching between mom duty and being presentable at work, or work-from-home professionals going from feeling frumpy to confidently switching on zoom or going to client meetings.
We are also proud to have built sustainable and ethical practices throughout our processes from materials and design to manufacturing and packaging. We believe in a small wardrobe that minimizes fashion waste, and we produce all our products ethically in the US.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Like pretty much everything else, I learned how to manage the manufacturing process after starting Sonderlier. In addition to checking the quality through sampling, knowing that unethical labor practices are prevalent in the fashion industry, it was very important to me that the manufacturer we work with treats workers well. For this reason and to lower the environmental footprint, I made a point to only work with manufacturers in the US. With each manufacturer, I asked specific questions about their worker pay and treatments, and visited some on site. There are many variables in manufacturing, especially during the pandemic. So continuous monitoring was very important to prevent long delays. But I’ve also learned to always budget extra time for production because there often are unexpected situations.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I started developing our first collection in the fall of 2019, and so in the middle of development the pandemic started, disrupting the process. We had to come to a complete stop for over three months, and the supplies were delayed even longer. I think the most challenging part was the uncertainty of not knowing when things will start back up again. But during the forced stop, I learned that there are often blessings in disguise if you really look for it. I was able to clarify my vision and mission more during that period of time, which ultimately gave the collection more focus. And with the “abnormal” environment, your creativity becomes really important. For example, how do we do fitting during a lock down, or a photoshoot in a pandemic? That’s how we came up with ideas like virtual fittings, and recruiting friends as models.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sonderlier.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonderlier/

Image Credits
Photo credit: Delaney Viau