There is an image I have carried with me for over forty years.
A woman I did not know, walking through a cold winter day, dressed for her own pleasure and no one else's.
The kind of woman who knows exactly how she looks — and has decided it is enough.
A woman I did not know, walking through a cold winter day in a boiled wool coat, waist cinched with a belt I had made from leather scraps at fourteen. She had no idea I was watching. She had no idea who had made it. She simply walked — head up, entirely at ease, dressed for her own pleasure and no one else's. The kind of woman who knows exactly how she looks and has decided it is enough.
I couldn't breathe. Not from pride, though I felt that too. From something more specific — the understanding that a well-made piece, chosen carefully and worn with intention, can change the way a woman carries herself. Can make her feel like the only person in that space.
My goal, from that moment on, has been to recreate that feeling in every piece I have designed since.
I grew up in communist Romania — a Hungarian in Transylvania, wearing a uniform from kindergarten through the end of high school. Every day, the same clothes. The same as everyone else. Designed to make you disappear.
I was bored of disappearing.
At fourteen, my father was overseeing the construction of a leather factory and I spent my summer trailing behind him through rooms that smelled of leather and possibility. I touched everything I was allowed to touch. And some things I wasn't. By the end of the summer I had talked my way into some scraps, made a few belts and a vest, and — at my mother's encouragement — sold them.
That winter, I saw the woman in the coat. And I understood what I was supposed to do.
I studied textile design, fashion design, and interior design. I worked in knitting mills, ran my own studio, worked in haute couture, built a maternity clothing line that I manufactured in North America and supervised personally. For the past five years I have run Chiclery, a fine leather accessories brand handcrafted in my studio in the Arizona desert.
Across every chapter, the same conviction: a garment designed to be discarded was never really designed at all. It was just produced. The material is the beginning of everything. The fit is the point of everything. And the woman wearing it deserves both done properly.
The fashion industry, unfortunately, forgot that somewhere along the way.
After decades in an industry that worshipped the sample size, the conclusion was unavoidable: it was designing for a particular woman, and everyone else was an afterthought.
The woman it totally disregarded is over 50. She is busy, present, and full of life. She has developed real taste — she knows what she likes and why. She moves between a board meeting and dinner, a school pickup and a charity event, sometimes within the same day. She has money to spend on clothes that are worth it. And she is not the sample size or shape she was at 27.
And she cannot find them. Not because she isn't looking. Because the industry never saw her as worth designing for.
Until recently, I didn't fully see it either. And then I realized — there is not much out there for women like me.
She is, in many ways, the stranger in the coat — still walking, still proud, still refusing to disappear. She is, in many ways, me.
The Fit publishes periodically. Each post covers something the fashion industry would prefer you didn't think about too carefully: why your clothes keep failing you, what separates a good garment from a great one, how to build a wardrobe for your real life, and what is actually happening behind the price tags and trend reports.
If any of this sounds familiar — if you have stood in a dressing room and felt like the clothes were designed for someone else entirely — you are exactly who this is written for.
There is a clothing line taking shape. It is called Nowaist. Built for the woman The Fit is written for. Before I build it, I want to know you are out there and what you need. If you are her, tell me.
In the meantime — I am also the founder of Chiclery, a fine leather accessories brand handcrafted in my studio in the Arizona desert. Each piece is made by hand, from materials I have chosen personally.
— The Fit
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