TAILOR MADE

Look at the landscape of women's workwear today and you'll see a wide range of options — mainstream brands offering specific women's collections, wider size ranges to suit more body types, and truly functional details rather than faux elements designed for show.

There's one brand at the heart of that transformation: Dovetail Workwear.

Based out of Portland, Oregon, the women-led brand debuted in 2018 with a pair of pants, the Maven, built for women in nontraditional fields, such as landscaping, farming, welding, and carpentry. At that time, there simply weren't many well-fitting options for working women. Workwear, primarily made for men, wasn't designed to fit women's diverse bodies, hold their gear, and move with them throughout the day. Dovetail sought to change that — and they have, inspiring other brands along the way.

Dovetail's founders were three women — landscape designers Kate Day and Kyle Marie Summers, and apparel developer Sara DeLuca, who'd worked with top brands in New York City for years before moving to the West Coast. Sara's chance meeting with Kate and Kyle led to the idea for Dovetail, and together they made it a reality.

For the latest in our Voice of the Expert series, we spoke to Sara DeLuca about her transition from traditional apparel to workwear, how performance fibers can make the difference for women's workwear, and why designing workwear for women is so meaningful.

I want to go back in time a little bit. Can you tell me about your career, and also how you got connected with your co-founders, Kate Day and Kyle Marie Summers?

I have a long history in apparel development and production. I really cut my teeth at Gap over 20 years ago, working for them in San Francisco, Miami, and then New York — it was a dreamy training ground to really learn the business. From Gap, I went on to work for several high-end specialty denim brands in New York — Paper Denim & Cloth, Rogan, and various others. Then I had my first child and really wanted more balance in my life, so we moved to the West Coast, to Portland.

Around that time, I met my two co-founders, Kate and Kyle. They had started a landscaping business, and I'd hired them to work on a couple of my properties. They were really trying to create a professional uniform for themselves — they wanted to show up professionally to meet with clients and contractors, who were often male, and be taken seriously. At the same time, they needed apparel that would function for the physical parts of the job — unloading the truck, spreading gravel, digging trenches, or picking up the next load of plants at the nursery.

They needed something versatile enough to support both sides of their work. I was working from home a lot at the time, so I'd sit on the back deck when they took water breaks and they'd lament the state of women's workwear. I said, "Well, I'll make you guys a pair of pants."

So it started as a fun side project. But the minute we had prototypes and they started actually wearing the product, people would stop us on the street and say, "Where did you get those? I need that" — "I'm a carpenter," or "I'm a wildlife biologist," or "I'm a fisherwoman." Anyone with a similar mix of needs in workwear — something that fit, looked good, had extensive pocketing, and took a female worker seriously.

At the time, there just wasn't much out there. The big brands did have women's lines, but they were basically takedowns from the men's lines — the fabrics weren't as durable, the pockets weren't deep enough, the fit was... it's the age-old lament. A lot of brands have come a long way since then, but especially when we started, it was like, "Oh my gosh, there's nothing here."

We realized early on that there was a real opportunity — but we also realized it wasn't just about the pants. It was about women who'd been working in these fields forever, and the problem was that no one was taking them seriously, no one was building product for them. Many of them were disruptors and leaders in their field, but they were retrofitting, resewing, and tailoring whatever garments were available to try to make them fit.

In those early sessions, it was so much fun, because women would bring in the garments they'd been wearing and show us what they'd done to make them work. It was fascinating — there was so much ingenuity and creativity. I think that's what women do — we make things work.

But coming back to that point — I think that's the most important thing about our brand: understanding that yes, we were going to build beautiful, high-quality, high-performing product, but the bigger mission — which is really the heart and soul of the brand — is about empowering women in nontraditional occupations. Making them feel confident, making them feel like they can show up and perform, and recognizing all the hard work they do.

Why was that important to you? You'd done so much work with high-end brands, working in these big markets — what was it for you personally that drew you to working women and workwear?

I think I'd reached a point in my career where — if I were starting another apparel brand — I probably wouldn't have done it just to make more product. I love our industry, but making more product just to make more product wouldn't have been enough to invest the time and energy it takes to really build a brand.

For me, the fact that this was a mission-driven brand — not just a compelling reason for being, but the day-to-day interaction I have with our end users and our wear testers, and the way I learn from them — it's something completely different. It was the perfect culmination of everything I'd learned over the years, from all those brands, from working with amazing people and factory partners. It was a way to take all of that and put it somewhere really meaningful.

I have a son and a daughter, and being able to highlight women doing powerful things and make that normal rather than the exception, was really important to me, for both of them to grow up seeing that as normal. That's tremendously powerful.

Running a small brand, growing a small brand, is not for the faint of heart. The past couple of years have proven that. That's why I get up and show up every day — it's about the mission. Of course, I love the product too, but the mission is really the why.

Can you tell me a bit more about the development process? You mentioned the wear testers — I'd love to know what goes into making these garments.

A lot of brands wear-test, we're no exception. I think we probably lean in even heavier than most because of how we were formed. Kate and Kyle were working literally in the trenches, so from the inception of our first product, it was very collaborative: how is the end user using it, and how can we modify it to make it even more impactful for the person actually wearing it?

That's followed the brand as we've grown. Before we even start product briefs, we're out in the field talking to women about what's missing — if you could design the perfect coverall, what would it look like? What do you like about what you're currently wearing? What would you change? Those conversations inform our designs before we ever put pencil to paper. Throughout the process, that ongoing dialogue is really important to us. Then we lean way into wear testing — gathering feedback, making adjustments before we go into bulk production.

Often we're wear-testing even at the fiber stage, which is not typical for brands. We'll develop fabrics, wear-test the fabrics, then put them into silhouettes where it makes sense. So we're testing at the fiber level through the fabric stage, as well as testing in garment form. What we're looking for is the perfect Goldilocks formula — the fabrics that really make a difference in performance.

The COOLSWAP™ collection we built with The LYCRA Company is a perfect example: we wanted to solve a problem — keeping women cool on the job — looked at a few different ways to solve it, found a fabric that felt like the ideal solution, put it into garment form, wear-tested it, and got feedback. The LYCRA^® T400^® fiber used in the collection was essential to solving the problem, since it’s durable, wicks sweat to keep you cool, and offers a nice amount of stretch. Even now that the product's in market, we'll go back, look at customer reviews, and make adjustments before our next production run. We're always looking at continuous improvement. That's a big part of what we do.

Tell me about what fit means for someone who's working — squatting, climbing, kneeling, reaching. How is that idea of fit different from everyday apparel, and from the work you've done in the past? 

Fit is always important. Like a favorite pair of jeans — you want to feel comfortable whether you're going on a trip or going to work. Fit matters no matter what brand you're working for. 

But I was really excited to explore this idea of workwear and athletic wear — the idea that people who are working physically are industrial athletes, so to speak. The things they need are very similar to what professional or advanced athletes need — durability, mobility, wicking, cooling — all the things that enhance performance for an athlete are the same for people doing physical work, because it's the same thing: they're in constant motion. Maybe they're squatting, maybe they're on their knees, maybe they're on a ladder, maybe they're in and out of intense heat. That's been one of the really fun areas for us — innovating around fabric and bringing that performance to the workplace, and seeing how it helps her do her job. 

You offer a broad size range. How do you think about fit across that range? Does that come back to wear testing with different body sizes? 

 We offer a broad range of sizes, and especially in the extended sizes, we're fitting on two different models, creating two different patterns, and grading differently on our extended size range than on our base range. That's something we're constantly improving, because we get feedback, and women's bodies are so diverse. It's a fun area to work on, and a very challenging one — but it's really important to us, because that was a big part of our brand's inception. 

Not only was there not a lot of women's workwear out there, but the size limitations were crazy. Kyle, one of my partners, is really petite — she was buying boys' pants because she couldn't even find her size. And on the other end, women were buying men's clothing because they couldn't find anything in the upper sizes. So we went out and probably overreached in some cases with our SKU count because it was important to us. It's just part of our foundation. 

I want to talk a bit more about the fabric development you do. You've chosen to use fibers from The LYCRA Company — why did you end up choosing our ingredients, and how do you go about finding those Goldilocks fabrics and ingredients? 

It's usually through partnerships, like the one we have with The LYCRA Company. In this case, we'd been working for several years to create lighter-weight options for women. We were using cotton-spandex blends and trying to go lighter and lighter but running into durability issues. At the same time our customers were asking for even lighter weight, because it's warm out there for longer periods of time. A lot of customers, especially in the Southeast where it's sweltering in the summer and they're out beekeeping or farming, needed full coverage but just couldn't find anything light enough. 

About two years ago, at the Kingpins trade show, I met The LYCRA Company's product category director for wovens, Ebru Ozaydin, and she said, "I can solve this problem for you." That's how it starts — there's a problem, and you get innovative people together to solve it. We brought in Sapphire Finishing Mills and started working on a fabric that would solve for lightweight, stretch, and durability. Using LYCRA® T400® fiber, we could build in other performance aspects, like cooling and moisture-wicking, to help with performance in the environments these garments were being worn in. And that's how the COOLSWAP™ collection was born. 

What has the response been to COOLSWAP™ so far? 

Resoundingly, people are super excited. When this program came out, it sold out on our website within two weeks. The subsequent styles we've released have also been extremely well received. There just aren't a lot of lightweight options for women out there that are durable and comfortable. 

Can you tell me a little about the first garment you developed? I think you said it was pants — is that right?

Pants — yeah, they're always the biggest pain point. It's where we started, and it's really where we still spend most of our time. We've built out additional product since, but pants, especially woven pants, are hard to find and hard to fit well for women — different rise preferences, straight leg versus boot cut. There's so much opportunity to provide an array of options for women in pants.

We started with what we call the Maven, a slim-legged pant, designed around what Kate and Kyle needed at the time — something without so much bulk, especially at the bottom of the leg, because they were working in areas where they didn't want things to get caught, and they were often biking to and from the job site. So the Maven was a slim-leg, ten-pocket pant, first designed around their landscaping tools and what they carried while working.

Before we launched, we ran what we called "50 Pants for 50 Women" — we brought in women from every industry we could find and tested the pocketing system across industries, and made adjustments so it would work for a variety of occupations. My perspective was to make it as democratic as possible — I knew it wouldn't solve everyone's problems, but I felt it was a good starting point. The Maven was our first pant, and it's still in the line — in fact, when I tried to phase it out and improve on it, people said, "No, no, we want the original Maven back."

What's next? What are you working on now?

For 2027, we're working on a more cohesive denim collection. We've used denim in the line before, in various styles, but we've always been a bit more canvas- and rip-stop-heavy in terms of fabrication. Denim is the quintessential work fabric, so it's been really fun to create a collection around it — not huge, relatively small, but really leaning into heritage denim details in the workwear itself. It's straightforward, but it's not done from a lens of fashion — it's done from a true lens of workwear. So you won't find any faux hammer loops on our product.

Finding the right fabrics, the right silhouettes, the right level of durability and weight — it's been a great project, like frosting on the cake in terms of getting to work on inspirational product. That's coming out in 2027, and we're super excited about it. And I'm excited about the ongoing innovation coming from fiber suppliers — working with innovative mills and continuing to move forward on those big questions in our industry around sustainability.

Thank you, Sara, for making time for us and collaborating with The LYCRA Company on your inspiring collections!