We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yansi Fugel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yansi below.

Yansi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

As a fashion brand known for its contemporary women’s clothing, with stylish and versatile pieces, my mission was to empower women in business to feel confident and effortlessly chic. The look was softly tailored with jackets, pants, skirts and tops appropriate for the C-suite, and designed to function as sportwear, imbue confidence, and create a variety of looks with minimal number of pieces. In 2014, observing Angelina Jolie casually fabulous in a tux on the red carpet, a private client requested a tux to wear to her various events. Genius I thought, and being always partial to pants, made myself a tux as well, Every time either of us wore our tuxes, I would receive a request for a tux.
Why should only men have it easy? Calling on my RTW background, each “tuxshedo” was fit and styled to each client. Slim pants, Flare pants. Pants with slits. Stretch cotton shirts, Silk tux bib blouses. Silk double face reversible tanks and camisoles. Pieces that can move around your closet. Tux jacket with a t-shirt and denim, tux pant with an chunky sweater, multifunctional and also sustainable.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I embraced fashion at an early age, learning to sew from my mother and influenced by her sense of style. The joy of thinking and visualizing something, and the emotional importance of craft, the art of the process to bring it to life is a passion. While creativity was practiced in my personal life, academically I was influenced by family to pursue a “legitimate” profession. Having begun my education at an early age, graduating high school at 16, enrolled in FDU in liberal arts and subsequently transferred to MSU to major in fine art and pursue my creative nature. While working at a clothing boutique during college, I discovered there is a whole industry around fashion and promptly transferred to FIT. At FIT I took both fashion design and fashion business courses as I intended to someday have my own business and wanted to be knowledgeable in all aspects of the fashion industry. Working for nine years for a specialty retail company was a great learning experience with the bonus of meeting my future husband. Together, we launched our business consulting for large retail businesses, such as Nordstrom, Macy’s, Spiegel’s Catalog, to design and produce their own label merchandise, the beginning of private label merchandise. My understanding of how to fit the female body and the importance of comfort truly influences confidence for each client. The natural evolution was then to launch our business with my namesake label and our own retail store to keep a pulse on what women want.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Life is a series of pivots, always a choice to be made on this journey. Instinct plays a huge part, but logic is critical as well, especially for creatives. Having people that you trust and can offer differing opinions and perspectives is so necessary. At the same time, you need to be true to yourself, think and feel what is the next thing to do. My first pivot took our business out of major retailers Saks and Neiman’s to focus our business on specialty stores which connected me more directly to the consumer through trunk shows and regional markets. My brand evolved based on that shift and the experience continues to influence my design practice. My current incarnation is focused on each client, and every garment is made to order, thus achieving perfect fit and is sustainable for our environment.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Our Collection is all produced with the same manufacturer for the past 30 years, through several pivots and rebrands. We are a women owned brand and work with a woman owned manufacturer. Quality and fit is consistent, and delivery is predictable. Having learned to sew at an early age, studying patternmaking and technical design at FIT have imbued an understanding of the process needed in garment manufacturing. We met through a mutual friend and felt a connection pretty immediately, women supporting women. I suppose that was an instinctive connection as we were both starting our businesses, The most important point in manufacturing is detailed tech packs and clear communication, the smallest omission could be very costly. That encompasses fabric & trim details, garment specs, delivery timing as key considerations in the manufacturing cycle.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tux-couture.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tuxcouture/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yansi-fugel/

Image Credits
James Hall phoDESIGNS McKinley Walker