Finnegan Shepard: Boys, Boys, Boys

This episode is a conversation with Finnegan Shepard who is founder of Both& Apparel—a company that closed on one-million seed round and is pioneering non-binary fashion, starting with apparel for trans men. The company is powered by the belief that trans masculine, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people deserve gender joy through fashion.

On March 31, 2023, Both&, launched their first global advertising campaign photographed by non-binary photographer Lydia Garrett of creative agency WongDoody. This campaign launch coincided with Trans Day Visibility and promoted the labels new denim line.

The campaign is called “Boys, Boys, Boys” perhaps as a play on the phrase ‘boys will be boys,’ which is often used to describe gendered stereotypes of masculine heteronormative behavior, except in this case, instead of depicting cismen, the campaign uses transmen to define masculinity and sex appeal—a clear inspiration coming from famed images of the 1990s Calvin Klein’s underwear campaigns whose attractiveness was charged with classical ideas of traditional masculinity and whiteness. In the Both& Apparel campaign whiteness is replaced by ethnic diversity and the viewers gaze is displacing hypermasculinity by hypertransvisibility. The intention of the campaign is made explicit, it’s all about sex appeal and being desired.

Please join me as I talk with Finnegan via Zoom from his home in New Mexico. We talk about the growth of Both&, their global campaign, and dive into ideals of trans masculinity that no longer belong to cis men. 

#transfashion #transmasculinity #fashion #genderjoy #both& #finneganshepard