Associated grad’s NYC suit shop serves trans clients

Examples of Bindle & Keep bespoke suits CAITLIN MITCHELL PHOTO
Examples of Bindle & Keep bespoke suits CAITLIN MITCHELL PHOTO

Daniel Friedman believes traumatic events in his own life led him to be more open and compassionate.

The 37-year-old Toronto-born former yeshiva student and graduate of Associated Hebrew Schools is the founder and owner of Brooklyn-based bespoke suit shop Bindle & Keep, known for its predominantly transgender and gender non-conforming – meaning people who don’t identify as male or female – clientele.

The store, which opened a bricks-and-mortar location in 2014, is the subject of a new documentary that was slated to premiere on HBO Canada June 26 called Suited, produced by the co-creators of of HBO’s Girls Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.

About a decade ago, Friedman, whose family moved to Ohio when he was 13, had 10 years of school and two master’s degrees to his name and was on track to become an architect.

However, one night while writing a paper, he abruptly lost the ability to read or write. While he could read a sentence on a page, Friedman said, he couldn’t retain the information long enough to connect it to the sentence that followed.

READ: EX-CHASSID SPEAKS ABOUT BEING TRANSGENDER, LEAVING THE FOLD

Though finally identified last summer as severe lead poisoning, Friedman’s condition confounded doctors for years and left him severely ill, as well as deep in medical debt.

“At that time, I was couch surfing, I didn’t have a home… I used to walk around New York City wondering how it had happened… But I continued to dress well and look put together, so I had this secret belied by my clothing,” he recounted.

To make ends meet, he started doing interior renovation contracts in private homes and eventually decided he would start a suit company, reasoning, “I can still speak. I can still measure and design, and I’m great with my hands.”

He began designing custom-made suits for individual clients, mostly “cisgender [the opposite of transgender] male Wall Street-types,” to whom he made house calls to avoid their discovering he worked from a “tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.”

The company grew, and in 2012, Friedman was approached by Rae Tutara, a then-aspiring tailor with a blog that advised gender-queer people on places to find clothing that fit them.

Tutara, who identifies as transmasculine, saw that Friedman had designed a suit for a well-known drag king and asked to apprentice under him.

The rest, in a way, is history: Tutara became a partner in the company and although Bindle & Keep serves anyone, through word of mouth and substantial press, the store has seen an influx of gender non-conforming clients and people from across the LGBTQ spectrum.

When a client first comes in, Friedman and Tutara sit down with them and ask about their life, their experiences and what will make them feel good.

“To figure out how someone wants to wear their clothes, we have to understand their story, their feelings… this helps us know things like how much room to give in the waist, how to assess the crotch, the style,” Friedman said.

Each suit is made from scratch, and for many trans clients, the work includes figuring out how to cut the material so that it highlights or hides body parts, according to the person’s sense of self-image.

Friedman said he will, for instance, “de-emphasize the bust or work with the curvature of the hips… we have to suss out people’s bodies and triggers, to understand their lives, struggles, where they want to be.”

The conversations can be emotional. Clients will talk about never before having found clothes that fit them, or in which they’ve felt comfortable, but they’ll also address issues such as violence or emotional abuse, being kicked out of change rooms and having their parents refuse to come to their wedding.

Friedman compares a suit to a piece of armour, noting, “Clothing can be the bane of a lot of peoples’ existence… People need suits to apply for jobs, to get married… A lot of our clients have never worn suits before and are finally [allowed] to [legally] get married. Now, they can also look the way they want.”