A label to watch: how ESQUE/BY looks to bring bespoke fit to ready-to-wear
Jennifer “JJ” Lee built New York fashion brand ESQUE/BY around an exacting approach to fit, shaped by science, technology and her mother’s experience after breast cancer surgery. Having reimagined what bespoke fashion can look and feel like, the designer is now on a mission to make clothes that truly fit accessible to a wider audience, by launching the brand's first-ever ready-to-wear collection in November.
Lee completed her bachelor’s degree in computational and systems biology at UCLA before beginning a career spanning engineering, product innovation and marketing at L’Oréal. Away from the office, she was already making clothes, including the bridesmaids’ dresses for her wedding.
What truly changed the course of her career, though, was helping her mother dress after she had undergone breast cancer and surgery. Lee began altering and creating garments to fit her mother’s changing body, working beyond conventional sizing.
“After breast cancer and surgery, I watched her relationship with clothing and her body change,” Lee said. “Something as ordinary as a fitting room could become incredibly vulnerable.”
A technical route into tailoring
Lee then founded ESQUE/BY in 2025 as a bespoke tailoring studio in New York’s Garment District. The global business ships internationally and involves clients throughout the design process, from initial references and sketches to fittings and the completed garment.
Through the use of technology and AI the brand explores form and proportion, iterating quickly with clients and establishing creative alignment before a garment made. The physical making of the item, however, firmly falls into the hands of seasoned pattern makers and tailors. Through this unique, innovative approach the brand has been taking bespoke tailoring to a whole new level.
“Technology accelerates the conversation; it doesn’t replace the craft,” Lee said. “There are things a screen can tell you, and there are things only a fitting can tell you.”
Traditional menswear and tailoring remain significant influences on the brand's aesthetic, with Lee frequently drawing upon techniques historically associated with menswear - strong shoulders, controlled waistbands, functional pockets, blazer construction and generous seam allowances - while reconsidering them through a female perspective.
This philosophy also extends to the idea that clothing should be able to change and shift according to a client's future needs. Using bespoke techniques such as generous seam allowances and deeper hems, the garment can evolve with the wearer.
“Bodies aren’t static. I don’t think beautiful clothes should be designed as though they are,” Lee commented.
Bespoke knowledge moves into ready-to-wear
The years of creating truly bespoke pieces have now culminated in a new vision for the brand, which will see it take its learning about how clothing fit real women with different bodies and proportions into the ready-to-wear market.
ESQUE/BY will launch its first-ever ready-to-wear collection in November, making the feeling of bespoke accessible to a whole new clientele.
“We start with pieces women already understand - the blazer, trouser, button-down and dress - and ask what makes each one unmistakably ESQUE/BY," Lee commented.
Among the collection's signatures will be The Three Piece, the brand's reinterpretation of the traditional menswear three-piece suit, replacing the conventional waistcoat with a corset and bringing together tailoring, structure and sensuality.
For Lee, ready-to-wear is the first commercial test of whether a process developed one client at a time can work beyond the bespoke studio.
“I don't want to scale away what made ESQUE/BY special," she explains. “I want to use the tools of the future to preserve what is human about making clothes.”
