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The founder and director of women’s tailoring brand Frey on the importance of tailoring for women, becoming an entrepreneur and bringing comfort as well as sophistication to women's business wear
After almost two decades in men’s tailoring, Frederieke van Doorn decided she wanted to offer women what men have for centuries enjoyed—the comfort and style of tailored suits and jackets.
“I love to wear jackets. I love how they are made. I think it’s one of the most difficult products there is. And I realised more and more that [women] don’t have that kind of product,” says van Doorn. “Of course, we can buy jackets and we can have suits. But they are not made in the same way. For men, they are all about comfort. It’s about how does it fit; how does it feel? For women, for me, I go [to a shop] and I put on a jacket and I feel blocked; I feel locked. I put on a jacket and it’s not comfortable here; it’s not comfortable there. Yet we put it on and we walk away with it.”
Van Doorn wanted an alternative solution. “In Hong Kong there are so many women in high positions who are required to wear business clothes like jackets and suits. But they are not happy with their choices,” she says. Most upsetting for van Doorn was the revelation that many of the women she spoke to had their work clothes and then their fun clothes. “This is so sad. You wear [your work clothes] for 60 or 70 hours a week and you don’t even like them. So, I thought I had to do something and put my knowledge from men’s tailoring into women’s tailoring.”
It was 2020 and the global pandemic was in full swing when van Doorn started working with designer Yulia Tlili on the first collection for the brand that would become Frey. “A lot of people got pregnant [during the pandemic]. This is my baby,” says van Doorn.
In 2021, the first Frey store opened on Ice House Street in Hong Kong’s Central district. Van Doorn was convinced of the importance of having a physical space, despite many new fashion brands going straight to online. “You need to feel it. You need to touch it,” she says of her product. “It’s not really an online thing. It will be, but first I need to establish it. You need to feel this and try it. It’s not just any other jacket.”
This month van Doorn is due to open the second Frey store in K11 Musea in Tsim Sha Tsui, and is also considering the US as her next market, though mainland China is also a goal.
Frey’s products channel the ethos of men’s tailoring and are made in the same way. When it comes to crafting jackets, there are three options: fused, half canvas and full canvas. Fused is normally find off the rack and is where the fabric in the jacket is glued together. “That gives you no movement,” says van Doorn, whose products, both ready-to-wear and customised are half canvas, which means they are partly fused, but not all fused, allowing for a better fit and greater sense of movement.
