Pulling stitches in plans altered by COVID-19 gave birth to a new clothing company for this Edmond family

EDMOND, Okla. (KFOR) — The seam line from pattern to finished garment is never a straight one.

“This is actually going to be a sweatshirt,” says designer Tamra Gould

She’s always known she has to bend it to make it fit right.

“What you see here is how garments are made,” she continues, “wherever.”

She and her husband Juan Aguilar were finishing up their last semesters of design school.

Tamra had her senior portfolio all done.

She even had a job lined up in New York designing clothes.

Then 2020 changed everything.

“COVID happened,” she states. “So we moved back home with my parents. And, of course, my offer was rescinded.”

From ‘so what now’ to ‘What now? Sew.’

Tamra and Juan took over her parents upstairs game room, and spent most of their meager life savings on some industrial machines.

Gould smiles and says, “After all that I looked at Juan and said, ‘yeah. we’re doing it.’”

Tamra’s sister Tressa was forced home too from chasing a full time job as an architectural engineer.

They recruited her as Nash Engineered Fashion came to be.

“I think we’re in a good place right now,” says Juan.

Their first line debute online right around Christmas.

Think comfortable street wear, sort of deconstructed.

They incorporated actual QR codes as design elements uniting technology and fashion.

“Making garments like this is a dream come true,” says Tamra holding up a windbreaker with built in turn signals that light up with the push of a button.

Part of this new company ethos is letting their customers know exactly where their clothes come from, kind of like ‘farm to table’ for fabric.

“Reconnecting the wearer to their clothing,” is how Tamra puts it.

Another piece of the pattern is part of a long string that stretches back to Tamra and Tressa’s great, great, grandfather, engineer Lewis Nash.

“He invented something called the liquid ring vacuum pump,” says Gould.

Nash Engineered Fashion might be small yet, but the ability to solve often difficult and complex problems is already woven into the fabric of everything they do, double stitched and built to last.

For more information on Nash Engineered Fashion, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or TikTok.