In the new HBO documentary Suited, we meet a tailoring company whose clients include gender non-conforming and transgender people. But at Bindle & Keep, the stakes are considerably higher that just making sure the clothes fit. Derek, a transgender man originally from rural Pennsylvania, needs a suit for his wedding. “I don’t want anyone to pick me out from a line up of guys,” he tells tailors Daniel and Rae. “That would make my wedding day.”
Derek doesn’t want to stand out on his wedding day; but he also doesn’t want to simply blend in. Derek wants to be as comfortable in his clothes as he strives to feel comfortable in his skin. Derek transitioned from female to male ten years ago, but is having surgery to remove his remaining female reproductive organs. Suited follows his journey as he changes both his clothes and body to what he feels most at home with after years of questioning his relationship to gender.
Suited is a new documentary from director/producer Jason Benjamin which premiered at Sundance on Monday. Produced by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, the film finds common threads in the varied experiences of Bindle & Keep’s clients. Everett’s story, for example, is both typical and unique: he’s a law graduate, a trans man and cellist from Atlanta who is looking for a work suit, if he ever gets a job. He is repeatedly discriminated against, something he matter-of factly relates to his tailors. “You’re exactly what we’re after,” one potential employer tells him, “but we’re not ready to deal with the trans issue.”
Dealing with “the trans issue” is the day-to-day job of Bindle & Keep. Originally a Wall Street suit supplier business set up by Daniel Friedman, it evolved into offering custom made suits to gender non-conforming and transgender clients when he took on Rae Tutera, who identifies as a trans masculine person, as an apprentice in 2012. Rae felt there was a need for a trans/queer identified clothier and so reached out to the community. Daniel, a straight cis male, found his business opened up to an LGBT world he had previously no connection to whatsoever.
“It was a learning experience,” Daniel explains when we sit down to talk to the impeccably dressed Suited team ahead of their Sundance premiere. “It wasn’t like Rae said ‘let’s sit down and I’ll teach you what it is.’ It was just that when we started doing fittings together, I learned very nuanced things that can only be learned when immersed. Small things: Rae would ask someone how they would want to be addressed or what their pronoun is and would apologize if the wrong pronoun was used. It showed me that it was ok to mess up.”
Daniel’s experience was mirrored by Suited director Jason Benjamin when he took on this, his debut film project. A boom operator on the HBO show Girls, Benjamin’s interest was sparked by a 2013 New York Times article on Bindle & Keep. He floated the idea by his friends, Girls creator Lena Dunham and executive producer Jenni Konner, who encouraged him to pursue it, putting up their own money for an initial ten-minute taster. They remained on board as producers of the finished movie.
For Jason, the project evolved as he immersed himself in the community it portrayed. “When I first reached out to Rae, I wasn’t necessarily [seeing it] as a trans story,” he says. “I was seeing it as a story about people who were coming to Bindle & Keep to have a problem solved. That problem happened to coincide with gender. It wasn’t until I met Rae that [I saw that] gender is a huge part of this. There was a lot I didn’t know, there was a whole vocabulary I wasn’t familiar with. There was a whole way of thinking about gender that I didn’t know about.”
That way of thinking about gender is at once intensely complex and really quite simple. It boils down to this: one size does not fit all. Experiences and identities run across the gender spectrum. Lena’s sister Grace is gender non conforming and in the film, visits Bindle & Keep to procure a winter suit “to run around in.” Grace’s experience is not the same as that of the transgender clients of Bindle & Keep, but it is similarly about what fits. It is not about being assigned the wrong gender at birth or being born in the wrong body, but the strict delineation along ‘male’ or ‘female’ gender lines does not accurately describe who she is or how that changes. The challenge at Bindle & Keep is to make suits as unique as their clients’ identities.
Customers first articulate who they are through an online form on the company website which allows them to explain as much or as little of their personal circumstances as they like. If they’re feeling it, they come in for a consultation with Daniel and Rae. In Suited, we follow customers from that initial email through to consultation and fitting stages. With so many unique experiences, what is the common thread that binds all these people? “Struggle,” Daniel says, without hesitation. “Personal challenges with their bodies. It’s a suit right? What is a suit? A suit is a piece of armor. You put something on, you feel good. If it doesn’t fit right, it can not only not feel right, it can be extremely triggering, almost incendiary in terms of the feelings it brings up.”
In Suited, every client’s experience in front of the mirror is charged with emotion. They are getting suits for big, public occasions: weddings, job interviews, birthdays, anniversaries, life’s milestones. The film is supercharged with emotion, but the way in which Daniel and Rae relate to each person is through grace and humanity. That compassion is Bindle & Keep’s (and by extension Suited’s) strongest asset. When Aidan, a 12-year-old transgender boy from Arizona, is brought to Bindle & Keep by his grandmother (see, crying already, right?) to get a suit for his Bah Mitzvah, he finds himself in front of the studio mirror and can’t articulate what would work. “I’ve never felt good in clothing,” he says despondently. “Tell us,” Daniel coaxes gently, “because we are going to cut according to how you feel.”
The consultation at Bindle & Keep can be cathartic for the client. “That initial conversation is about sussing out people’s sensitivities,” says Daniel. “Just by listening you can help.” But it’s a process that works both ways. “I feel like I’m building community,” Rae says. “Someone is trusting me with more than just their clothes. They are trusting me with their story. The majority of the fittings are just us taking turns to relate. We all have these experiences. It’s like a solidarity thing.”
For Rae, born Rachel, the importance of a suit is keenly, personally felt. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, the power of a suit is the ease with which I can get dressed,” Rae notes. “The power of the suit is that it doesn’t detract from anything you are trying to do in the way regular clothes can. If you are wearing a suit that fits you well and makes you feel like yourself, it deepens your capacity for self possession.”
With the radical cultural shift beyond the gender binary at work in Suited, it comes as a surprise to see more traditional elements in play as well. Derek’s bride wears the classic white wedding dress; and suits, inevitably everywhere in this film, remain a powerfully gendered piece of clothing. But the subjects pick and choose what they want from tradition to create their best version of themselves. “One of the things I learned making the documentary,” Jason says, “was that gender is a spectrum with male on one end and female on the other and every single person has a very individual place on that spectrum and we are all free to express our gender however we want on that spectrum. We can take what we want from tradition and leave behind what doesn’t suit us.”
Bindle & Keep understand it is just one stop on a journey of its client’s self expression. “The suit isn’t this panacea, like ‘great, I’m done,'” Daniel says. But the tailors know too that the very fact of their existence means they are making a difference to people’s lives. “We get letters from around the world,” Daniel says, finally, “and one that stands out was from a mother of a transgender child in France. She said the fact that we exist made her feel so much better about her child being OK.” He smiles, takes a breath. “J. Crew doesn’t get that.”
Suited will premiere on HBO in June.
Credits
Text Colin Crummy