Local tailor makes custom clothes with bikes in mind

M-Horton’s Cycling Skirt is
designed with high, deep pockets,
rugged fabric, and biking and
gardening friendly length and flare.
(Photo: M-Horton.com)

Here in Portland, we’re used to our top-notch selection of local framebuilding talent, but how about some locally-made, custom clothes to wear on your locally-made, custom bike? And no, we’re not talking about tight hipster-jeans, or roadie lycra and spandex.

Enter Emily Horton, who is putting the finishing touches on the patterns and designs for her bike-specific, custom clothing. Horton is proprietor of M-Horton Clothing Designs, a one-woman custom-clothing and sewing house.

Horton says that when she got started commuting by bike at the age of 26, she immediately felt her wardrobe was lacking.

“When I learned to ride a bike, I started to realize that some of my pedestrian clothes weren’t as comfortable as they should have been,” said Horton. At the same time, however, she saw the majority of cycling-specific clothing as abandoning form for the sake of function. “I believed then, as I do now, that a person shouldn’t have to be ‘one of those gear-wearing people’ in order to feel comfortable riding,” she continued. “Clothing is functional, and it should serve a purpose, but it should also be stylish.”

A nice touch for stylish bikers.
(Photo: Dan Liu)

Many of the garments she is working on at her studio at SE 11th and Salmon were, indeed, quite Portland-chic. All of her work is, as she puts it, “A marriage of personal aesthetic with modern technology.” This means experimenting in a way most clothing designers do not: Horton sticks to traditional forms and ideas of casual street clothing, while playing with flexible cuts and tailoring on high-tech fabric.

The key to making clothes bike-specific is largely in the cut, Horton says. She describes her process as “problem solving” through cut and fit.

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The design for her cycling skirt came via a request from a friend of Horton’s: to make a skirt that could be used for both farming and biking. “It needed a lot of things that aren’t common in mass-produced skirts: the range of motion to mount a bike, fullness for cycling, it needed to be cut long enough to squat or kneel, a strong elastic waist, and, finally, pockets to put your tools in!”

Horton has made a lighter-weight, non-farming version of the same skirt with knit, wool jersey, which is currently being tested by a friend who is riding through Spain. It looks like an ordinary skirt — its bicycle-friendly elements are in the larger design considerations.

Emily Horton shows off her Cycling Trousers
(Photo: Dan Liu)

“The key is movement,” says Horton. “A bike-friendly sweater, for example, would have longer sleeves and a higher back/neck line to accommodate more aggressive, bent-down cycling postures.”

Horton is perhaps most excited, however, with experimenting with new fabric. One set of fabric samples she showed off is from a Swiss company, Schoeller Textil AG, and was originally designed for equestrian sports. It is stretchy, highly breathable, water-repellent, durable, and just as importantly, looks and feels exactly like thin, soft knit wool.

The other major design concept Horton has been working on solves the age-old cyclists’ dilemma: how high does one roll up one’s pant leg? Short of getting one of these, Horton’s solution is to tailor a remarkably elegant, button system at the bottom of both pant legs, involving two or three buttons running up the ankle, each of which fastens twice to hold a double-fold in place.

Horton’s says her designs and techniques are constantly being refined, and change for each custom order, but she is unveiling many of her cycling-specific designs, patterns, and samples at this week’s Handmade NW pavillion as one of this year’s Rose Festival vendors on the Waterfront on the 28th through the 30th of May.

M-Horton Designs is taking custom orders, and Horton also offers private sewing lessons to those interested. You can visit her website or email her at info at m-horton dot com.

– Check out M-Horton’s cycling-specific designs at the Rose Festival on May 28th – 30th.
– See work by other bike-oriented crafters, printers, designers, and more at the Summer BikeCraft on June 27th at the Multnomah County Bike Fair.