18 Oct How B.UR.SLF Came To Be
When the idea of B.UR.SLF first came to mind I was slowly clawing my way out of the worst depressive episode of my life. I was isolating myself, I had no job to take up my time, I had lost all motivation to keep up with hobbies I had spent years investing myself in, and I saw no purpose for myself moving ahead in life.
When I originally came up with the idea of making better binders for a living it was complete bullshit. I didn’t have any feasible plan on how to make it work in the long term, I was just trying to get the people who were worried about me off of my back by making it look like I had some idea of what to do with myself.
Originally my thought process for making a binder with a breathable and transparent back was that it would be better for cosplaying (somehow momentarily forgetting that I’m a trans man and would in fact like something more comfy for the day to day as well). There was a couple of popular pieces of media at the time that had backless costumes and I thought it would be neat if there was a product that allowed people to bind without taking away from the design of their costume.
The very first prototype was hand sewn in December 2015. It was a Frankenstein’s monster of mesh and a cut up binder from China that I had cobbled together on my basement floor, but at least it was something that I could say I made.
There are jokes that go around the internet from time to time that humans will pack bond with anything – including inanimate objects. I make these jokes a lot, mostly because I suffer tremendously from doing so. Ask anyone I’ve shown a cosplay prop to and they can tell you that. And that’s where I stood with the dinky little garment I had created. It would need a lot of fine tuning from a few different seamstresses we’d end up working with but man did I love it.
Later down the line we would work with a lot of new people to get to where we are. My mom had already taught me about product design by proxy because she had been doing it for 25 years at this point, but since then I’ve learned a lot about patenting, small business development, clothing manufacturing, and more. I’ve been incredibly grateful to all the people who have taken the time to teach me and I’m excited to see how we grow.
I feel a lot of nerves moving towards December, but I also feel excitement. There’s not a lot I ask for for my birthdays anymore, but I can’t think of a better gift (or three year celebration of the first prototype) than finally getting to share what I’ve made with the world. So when that time comes we hope to see some of you at Con Alt Delete 2018 for the release of B.UR.SLF.