Why I Stopped Designing for Everyone—Including Myself
Why I Stopped Designing for Everyone—Including Myself
There's a moment in any creative practice when the work tells you what it needs to become. For Herderin, that moment didn't arrive suddenly—it accumulated over seven years of research, design, and lived experience until the path became undeniable.
This collection represents a clarification, a commitment that's been building since the beginning. Herderin is now exclusively tall-centered: clothing designed from the ground up for bodies 5'9" and taller, crafted from regenerative materials that restore the earth. If you've followed this journey from earlier iterations, you know this is both a continuation and a departure. Here's why.
What the Research Revealed
As a sociologist studying how people get dressed every day, I kept encountering the same pattern: clothing functions as infrastructure for identity. When that infrastructure works—when it fits properly, moves with your body, feels right—dressing becomes seamless. You think through your clothing, not about it.
When infrastructure fails, everything changes. Your attention gets trapped in constant adjustment. You can't focus on the meeting, the conversation, the work at hand because you're managing wardrobe malfunction in real time.
For tall women, this infrastructure failure isn't occasional—it's systematic. Nearly every piece of mainstream fashion is designed for bodies 5'4" to 5'8", then adapted (poorly) for everyone else. Sleeves that don't reach. Inseams that expose ankle. Torsos that ride up. Waistlines in the wrong place. The cumulative toll of infrastructure that simply doesn't work for your body.
What became clear through the research: you can't serve everyone well when the foundational infrastructure is different.
When the Designer Can't Wear Her Own Designs
Here's the moment that crystallized everything: I was making clothing, putting years of research and care into each piece, building a brand around values I believed in—and I couldn't fit into my own designs.
Not because of body size. Because of height.
I was committed to radical inclusivity. I made zines about it. I designed for all genders—men, women, non-binary folks. I offered broad sizing to serve as many bodies as possible. I believed deeply in accessibility, in reaching more people, in fashion that didn't exclude.
And in pursuing that inclusivity—in trying to design for everyone—I designed myself out.
The sleeves didn't reach my wrists. The torsos rode up. The inseams stopped at my shins. I was a 6'0" tall woman making clothing that worked for average-height bodies across gender spectrums, but not for my own.
The irony was absurd. I was so committed to including everyone that I excluded myself.
Herderin started because I wanted to clothe myself—a tall woman with environmental values who couldn't find what she needed. I wanted clothing that fit my body and aligned with my ethics. That was the origin point. The entire reason this existed.
So why was I making clothing I couldn't wear? Why was the designer, the person putting everything into this work, left out of her own vision?
That's when I understood: "for everyone" often means "for no one in particular."
There are already thousands of brands attempting universal inclusivity. The market is full of clothing trying to work across heights, sizes, genders—and in that breadth, specificity gets lost. Tall women still compromise. We still adapt. We're still an afterthought in systems designed to serve the broadest possible market.
If I'm going to spend seven years researching, developing patterns, building relationships with regenerative farms, working with plant dye studios—shouldn't I at least be able to wear the result? Shouldn't the work serve the person most committed to it?
But here's what made this shift difficult: I had learned to value my work without valuing myself.
I could justify the research. I could advocate for regenerative materials. I could articulate why embodied design mattered. But when it came to saying "my body deserves this, I deserve clothing designed for me"—I hesitated.
There's something deeply uncomfortable about centering yourself when you've been taught your whole life to accommodate. To adapt. To make yourself smaller, less demanding, easier to fit into systems designed for someone else.
Being seen—really seen, as a tall woman claiming space and saying "design for me first"—required learning that I wasn't just valuable for the work I produced. My body mattered. My needs mattered. My lived experience wasn't just research data or design inspiration—it was worthy of being the foundation.
The most vulnerable thing—and the most honest thing—was learning to value myself enough to center myself.
Not as an afterthought. Not as adaptation. As the foundation.
This wasn't about ego or selfishness. It was about recognizing that if I couldn't value my own body enough to design for it, I was perpetuating the same system that told tall women we don't deserve infrastructure that actually works. That our needs are peripheral. That we should be grateful for approximations.
The decision became clear: stop compromising. Stop hiding behind "for everyone." Design for tall women exclusively—including, finally, myself.
Now every garment I make, I can wear. Every proportion I calculate works for my body. Every inseam reaches. Every sleeve fits. I'm not adapting patterns for hypothetical customers—I'm designing from my own embodied experience and extending that to other tall women. Further, I know my designs can still drape well on many body types: I am pear-shaped, and yet Herderin also fit beautifully on, for example, athletic- and narrow body types.
This is what integrity looks like: valuing yourself enough to make what you need, making it excellently, and trusting that being visible in your truth—that you matter, not just your work—is essential.
The Tension Between Inclusion and Excellence
For years, I tried to design broadly. Clothing that could work across many heights, many bodies. The intention was good—inclusivity, accessibility, reaching more people. But intention doesn't override material reality.
Here's what I learned: designing for "everyone" means designing for the statistical average and hoping adaptations work for outliers. It means tall women still compromise. It means garments that are almost right but not quite. It means infrastructure that sort of functions but never fully supports.
I had to make a choice: design broadly and serve tall women adequately, or design exclusively and serve them excellently.
Excellence won.
Not because other bodies don't deserve excellent clothing—they absolutely do. But because tall women have spent decades being told to make do with adequate. With adaptations. With "close enough." With infrastructure designed for someone else.
What if there was one brand that didn't ask them to compromise? That started with their proportions as the foundation, not the adjustment? That treated their embodied experience as primary, not peripheral?
That's what Herderin needed to become.
What Tall-Centered Actually Means
Tall-centered isn't just longer inseams (though we have those). It's rethinking every proportion:
Rise: Calculated for longer torsos, so high-rise actually sits at your natural waist instead of your hip bones. High rise actually being high rise.
Sleeves: Extended with proper ease and volume, accounting for shoulder placement and arm length relative to torso. Luxury to have extra volume and length to feel like a child in your parents clothes, even.
Torso length: Designed so tops don't ride up when you move, dresses hit at intentional places on your frame. Oversized shirts actually being oversized, while fitted tops hitting all the right placements alongside your waist.
Overall proportions: Where design details sit relative to your body—pockets, seams, hemlines—all reconsidered for tall frames.
Generous length everywhere: You can always hem. You can't add fabric. We design long intentionally, giving tall women the luxury of finally having enough.
This level of specificity requires commitment. You can't design this way while also serving 5'2" bodies—the foundational math is different. The proportions don't overlap. The infrastructure is distinct.
Why Regenerative Materials
The second clarification: regenerative materials aren't a nice addition to the brand. They're inseparable from it.
If clothing is infrastructure for identity, and if infrastructure has failed tall women systematically, then building new infrastructure requires asking: infrastructure for what kind of world?
I couldn't build a brand that finally centers tall women's bodies while continuing to extract from the earth. The two commitments had to be one.
Regenerative materials actively heal: Climate Beneficial™ farms sequester carbon, rebuild soil, support biodiversity. Every garment represents carbon pulled from the atmosphere, topsoil restored, ecosystems tended back to health.
Regenerative materials honor bodies: Natural fibers that breathe, regulate temperature, improve with age. Plant dyes that don't poison waterways or expose workers to carcinogens. Materials that return safely to earth at end of life.
Tall women deserve clothing that honors both their bodies and the planet. Not one or the other—both, always. Herderin is the first and only brand to focus on both tall women and regeneration.
What This Means for Early Supporters
If you supported Herderin before this collection—when sizing was broader, when the focus wasn't exclusively tall—thank you. Genuinely. You were part of the journey that led here.
This evolution means some of you won't fit into this collection the way previous pieces fit. Our garments are now designed with tall proportions as the baseline. If you're not tall, some pieces may still work (many are generous and forgiving), but they're not designed for your body first.
I won't apologize for this clarity—tall women have apologized for their bodies long enough, and brands have simply continued ignoring us. Instead, I'll say this:
You helped us learn what mattered most. The early work, the experimentation, the trying to serve broadly—all of it led to understanding that tall women needed someone to commit fully. To stop hedging. To design exclusively for them without caveat or compromise.
If that's not you, I'm grateful you walked this far with us. If you're tall and you've been waiting for someone to finally center your body—welcome home.
What Hasn't Changed
The core has always been about embodiment and care:
- Clothing as infrastructure, not decoration
- Materials as relationships, not inputs
- Regional production supporting local economies
- Zero hardware for freedom of movement
- Size flexibility and forgiving silhouettes
- Slow, intentional, made-to-order production
- Rejection of fast fashion's waste and exploitation
These commitments remain. They've just found their proper foundation: tall bodies and regenerative earth, inseparable.
Building Something Rare
There are thousands of fashion brands. Hundreds focused on sustainability. Dozens working with regenerative materials.
But there's almost nothing for tall women that doesn't ask them to compromise.
Herderin exists at that intersection: the only brand designing exclusively for tall women from regenerative materials grown, processed, sewn, and dyed regionally. It's specific. It's narrow. It's exactly what it needs to be.
This is the work as it was always meant to become.
If you're tall, if you've spent years adapting to infrastructure designed for someone else, if you're tired of choosing between values and fit—this is for you. Finally, unequivocally, without caveat.
An inaugural twenty-six styles. Climate Beneficial™ wool and cotton from California. US regenerative merino wool. Texas organic cotton from family farm co-ops. Renewable silk. Plant-dyed and carbon-sequestering processes. Sewn in San Francisco. Designed in San Rafael.
Made for bodies 5'9" and taller. Made to last years. Made to participate in regeneration—of land, of bodies, of the world we're building together.
Pre-order through March 15, 2026.
This is Herderin's foundation. This is where seven years of work has led. This is the beginning.
About the Author
Alix Vasquez is a sociologist (PhD, Brandeis University) specializing in identity, embodiment, and material culture. Her research "Clothing The Self" revealed that clothing functions as infrastructure for identity—and that when infrastructure fails, everything becomes harder. As a 6'0" tall woman, she lived this reality daily while pursuing radical inclusivity in her early design work. Herderin emerged from the intersection of her research and the vulnerable realization that she needed to value herself—not just her work—enough to design for tall women exclusively. It's regenerative fashion that refuses compromise between fit and values.
About Herderin
Herderin creates regenerative fashion exclusively for tall women. Every garment is designed for bodies 5'9" and taller using Climate Beneficial™ certified materials, regenerative US merino wool, renewable silk, and US organic cotton—sewn in San Francisco, California and hand-dyed with plants, OurCarbon organic waste, and Oeko-tex certified circular dyes. Pre-orders are open through March 15, 2026 for our inaugural tall-centered collection.