Meet Mary Cayten Brakefield of Brakefields

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Cayten Brakefield

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
We are a mother/daughter led team that comes from a long line of seamstresses, designers, and makers. We both fell in love with fashion at a young age by making garments for ourselves and our friends and family, and loved the idea of using that creativity and passion to build an impactful brand together one day. Through a series of personal and professional discoveries, we found that comfortable and customizable clothing is a universal need for all women. Combining this discovery with a family legacy of creating and a lifelong love of design, our brand was created to support women of all ages, sizes, and abilities seeking effortless elegance in their active lives.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have definitely been a lot of twists and turns in the journey to where our brand is today, but I don’t think we would be where we are without them! Through many different experiences in building our brand, we have refined our product, our customer base, and our messaging to now be able to offer a full line of pieces that are just as beautiful as they are functional. We had to spend a lot of time and resources in the beginning to learn the logistics of how to start a commercial brand like sourcing, manufacturing, and the nitty gritty of product development in fashion. We’ve also had to continually navigate how to effectively spread the word about our brand when there are so many different companies and pieces of content customers have to look at, engage with, and shop from.

There are few times I’m more grateful to be working with my mom than when we’ve hit a roadblock and have to figure out our way forward. She’s often my first call when anything in life gets tough anyways, so getting to work throught difficult work situations together as business partners is such a blessing.

Building anything new is hard, so my goal is always just to keep moving forward and not feel too knocked down when things don’t go the way we planned. So many of the brands/founders/etc that I look up to ended up being successful largely because they just never quit when everyone else did.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Brakefields?
Brakefields is a joyful clothing and lifestyle brand creating comfortable, customizable, and easy-care designs for women seeking effortless elegance in their active lives. We don’t want you to have to look sloppy in order to be comfortable. Rather, we want you to look beautiful, polished, and elevated but all while feeling like you’re in athleticwear.

We are creating a whole new category in the industry that isn’t as casual as athleisure but isn’t as uncomfortable as traditional elevated garments so that you can gain the powerful psychological benefits of dressing up without losing the functionality you need to navigate the demands of your day unrestricted. We bring the production methods of high end fashion to stretchy clothing to make sure you both look and feel your best.

In addition, customers can customize each of their garments to get the fit and function they’re specifically looking for. Our pieces are thoughtfully designed in Nashville and manufactured on-demand in Phoenix. This unqiue manufacturing model allows us to offer custom lengths to fit all heights, a size range of XXXS-6X, multiple print options, and even optional adaptations to support dressing with a disability.

We are best known for our widely popular Yesi Pants and all the variations of this style. The high waist and wide leg is universally flattering and designed to skim from the hip to the floor without clinging or pulling over your body. The stretch fabric drapes beatifully and the concealed elastic wasitband makes for a great fit throughout any fluctations your body might go through while remaining hidden so no one will even know you’re wearing stretchy pants. Everything is also machine washable!

How do you think about luck?
My dad always says luck is when preperation meets opportunity. He also says anything you achieve will be by and through other people. So we try to stay as prepared for anything as we can, and build meaningful relationships everywhere we go that might help bring opportunities in the future (or we might be able to do that for them!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shopbrakefields.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopbrakefields/