Engineering New Fashion

Tamra Gould, was born into a family of engineers. Her dad, sister and cousins are engineers. Even her great-great grandfather, who patented over 100 inventions, was an engineer. But Tamra? She’s artsy.

“I studied fashion design,” Tamra said. “But I guess growing up around engineers inspired me. For my senior project last year in Georgia, I decided to create textiles that also have problem-solving aspects.”

For cyclists, she added a turn signal light into a puffer jacket. She created a new waterproof fabric using Flex Seal. In response to Covid, Tamra invented a jacket with a thermometer system for reading the wearer’s temperature and alerting him or her of fever.

After Tamra graduated in January 2020, she accepted a New York fashion job, which was promptly rescinded because of the shut-down. So, she and her husband, Juan Aguilar, moved to her parent’s house in Edmond and wondered what to do next. They decided to invest their life savings and fabricate Tamra’s clothing designs.

“Engineers don’t typically collaborate with fashion designers,” admitted sister, Tressa Gould. But in this case, the sisters combined their skills to form a new clothing company, Nash Engineered Fashion.

“My dad let us take over the upstairs as a sewing room,” Tamra said. “Soon, industrial sewing equipment arrived by semi-truck, and we spent the summer learning how to use it, but on Christmas Eve, we launched our first collection.”

Now, it’s a family business. Tamra designs and sews, Juan manages the social media and screen printing, and Tressa cuts the fabric, manages logistics and engineering concepts. They named the company after their great-great grandfather, Lewis Nash.

Their younger brother Trafford was next invited to join the company. He’s artsy, too. “Trafford has Down Syndrome, but he draws these cool robots and he’s a brilliant engineer in his own way,” Tamra said. “We use his artwork and he screen prints the garments.”

Students at Edmond North High School selected the Down Syndrome Association as their charity of choice—and hosted a clothing fashion show of Trafford’s drawings. “Twenty-two individuals with Down’s modeled his clothing—and they rocked their outfits!” Juan said. “They didn’t do the traditional walk, they did whatever they wanted; some danced, did cartwheels, and one even did a breakdance routine.”

Nash Engineered Fashion moved into a store in Oklahoma City this spring, where they design, print and sew clothing in front of their customers. “Most people don’t know how clothes are made. They assume it’s all done by machines, like a car, but clothing is still guided by hand. If you buy one of our garments, it’s been touched by all of us, and it looks as professional as something you would buy from Nike,” Tamra said. “We try to be sustainable, too, recycling all our fabric scraps into bucket hats or hang tags.”  

Their current clothing line is “athleisure,” which is comfortable streetwear, but Nash hopes to expand further into smart clothing. “Our great-great grandfather published an essay that said, ‘An engineer is not limited to someone who studied engineering, but comes down to being a leader and an inventor in your chosen field,’” Tressa said.

For this family of artists and engineers, no doubt, more patents will be added to the family legacy. 

To learn more visit https://www.nashengineeredfashion.com.