Interview with Fashion Designer, Jen Hartmann

An interview for Transgender Awareness Week 2025

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing fashion designer Jen Hartmann. Here, Jen talks about his fashion label, Baal, his quirky upcycling designs and his long-term project to create clothing sizes with transgender women in mind. 

Tell us a little about yourself, Jen, and about what you're working on at the moment

My name's Jennifer Hartmann. I'm from Germany, but haven't lived in Germany in almost 10 years now. I lived in London for 6-7 years and I've lived on and off in Palermo in Sicily for roughly two and a half years. Personally, I'm non-binary. I normally prefer going with male pronouns. But I don't get offended if somebody gives me female pronouns.

In 2013, I  studied fashion design and I did my graduation collection, and that's when I came up with this project that I'm still working on. In essence, the project consists of two pieces: on the one hand, it's a fashion label which creates feminine clothing for transwomen or anyone who struggles with traditional cisfemale sizing. There are of course cis women who have for instance broader shoulders and are a bit taller and have the same kind of "issues" that transwomen have. 

The second aspect of the fashion label is the creation of a totally new clothing size, which is what I'm really focusing on now, and that's what I started in 2013. I spoke to transwomen in Berlin when I studied fashion design there and took their measurements. I am planning to take as many measurements as I can, and I will create a totally new clothes size. The clothing size is the long-term goal.

The new clothes size is not just for my own fashion label though, I will approach big labels and suggest they use the new size too. It’s a dream of mine that transwomen can go into the shop, and they don't have to  struggle with finding the right size anymore.  Now it’s like, it doesn't fit and it's really awkward and a really awful experience. Instead, you know, they could just go to the shop and find the right clothes that look feminine. I think some people sometimes when I'm… when I explain it, they're not really 100% sure about what it means, because, you know, there's, like, genderless clothing and unisex and stuff like that, but that's absolutely not what I'm doing. You know, my clothes are not non-binary in any way at all. They are very binary. The clothes are very traditionally feminine. But they are just not for cis female people. 

The fashion label is called Baal. It's named after the first play that Bertolt Brecht ever wrote, and it influenced my life massively.

What have you found out so far when you've been taking the measurements? Are there any particular things that stand out that you'll want to bring into your clothing sizes?

The bodies that I've measured so far are different from cis female bodies in the way that people have broader shoulders, longer arms and they are often taller. The torso is different. There's not as much hip-to-waist ratio. So when I'm designing clothes for my fashion label, I try to work around these and make the body look more traditionally feminine, by drawing attention to specific parts, or drawing attention away from others. For instance, when it came to trousers, I came up with this really great idea of having a diagonal waistband: you have a diagonal line in the middle of your body and rather than thinking there's no hip-to-waist ratio, people are actually looking at the problematic spot, but they're looking at something totally different. And also, through this diagonal line, the whole clothing becomes more rounded.

In general, when I design clothes, I always design asymmetrical clothes, because, you know, asymmetry is, like, totally my thing! And that's why I came up with the concept of subtle symmetry. The designs can make people think there's something wrong, something weird, but that means that they look at the clothes another time! They go for  a second look. And when I design clothes, they always have that. My dad always said to me, I could probably sell clothes better if I designed more normal clothes, just make normal clothes in the new clothing size. But I don't really want to do that. I want to make the clothing size for the community. I want other brands to use the clothing size.

How else would you characterise your own designs?

When I design clothes for transwomen, I design more traditionally feminine clothes. But I also work a lot with upcycling. I have a long history of upcycling which is how I got into fashion in the first place, when I was still a teenager, living in rural Bavaria. I love putting together weird fabrics that don't really make sense together, or other people wouldn't put them together, because they would think that that doesn't really work. Here in Palermo there’s a famous trans girl, Celeste Siciliano. I've dressed her for Palermo Pride twice in a row. Last year, I made a dress for her; the skirt was in rainbow colours, which were all from clothes that I bought at the market and just cut up. So it just became this kind of upcycled gown, which was really lovely. And the first year I did it, I gave her a tablecloth skirt, which was plastic and the top part of the dress was upcycled denim jeans. I love doing that.

Around COVID, I worked with two girls and I asked them to give me their favourite club outfits and then took them as an inspiration, and translated them into something quite quirky and totally different. I'm from Bavaria, where there's lots of agriculture. And I think my whole thing about being a fashion designer came from the fact that I was once on the school bus and was wearing a weird shirt and a girl said to me, ‘You would wear anything. You would even wear a sack, wouldn't you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I would, but I don't have one.’ And two weeks later, dangling on my door was a bag, and in this bag was a sack!  So, obviously, I had to do something with it, and I made a beautiful dress with it, and from that moment on, I was always the potato sack girl in my school. 

How would you describe your own style?

As a non-binary person, I often try to put something male and something female together. I like weird, quirky things, obviously, but I'm not super extremely show-offishly quirky!  I'm also 37 years old, so, you know, I'm not doing the crazy teenagey thing.  But I like weird, eccentric stuff and I also design weird, eccentric stuff, but I like putting different things together. I wore my own design when I went to Barcelona this year, because I won an award in the category of Innovation and Sustainability. I wore something that I made which was made from a tablecloth that belonged to my [late] grandma. The skirt was the tablecloth of my grandma, and the upper part was from a curtain that I bought for 50p or something in the market here in Palermo.

Has your style changed over time?

I think my style changed over the years. I think when I was younger, I put much more focus into presenting more masculine, because I wanted to be seen and read as more masculine or as a non-binary person. And I feared that if I put on a dress, it would jeopardise my identity, or make people think this or that, or whatever. And for quite a few years now, I don't feel this anymore. I know now, totally, that I can wear a dress, and I'm still a man in a dress, like, that's how I feel about myself. I live in a very binary society in Italy, so whenever I wear a dress here, which I do quite a lot, actually, because it's very hot, I'm sure people on the street think that I'm a beautiful woman and stuff like that, but, you know, I don't care, really. They could say this to me, but I know who I am and what I am, so now I feel a lot more secure in my own gender identity, so now I have, like, the full range of everything. I would say, in general, I do prefer wearing slightly tighter-fitting clothes.

Do you have a message to the fashion industry? What’s the one thing you’d like the industry to take on board?

I don't engage too much with fashion in the traditional sense. Obviously, I did study fashion design. I've worked at fashion shows and it's always a great buzz, but in general, it's not really an industry that's really nice to people. Shein and all these brands that are just like that, it's horrible, obviously. I have a friend here who actually buys her clothes from there, and I always tell her, you know, you just have to go to the market, and it's even cheaper when you do that and it already exists.

Is there anything you’d say to the transgender women looking for style inspiration?

I think it's important to try out different things. Sometimes I think people just put on pastels, or they don't really dare and they want to blend in too much. But, you know, there's nothing wrong about being trans. It's not a bad thing, it's not something to be ashamed of. I think it's something that can be embraced, and that's a great thing, so why not wear stuff that's a bit more out there? Because men's clothes are often a bit boring. If you're a transwoman and you come from a male background and you've spent all those years trying to be a man in dark blue trousers and a grey t-shirt. Now that you're finding yourself, you can put on all these beautiful colours. 

But there's obviously specific things that, you know, work better for different bodies. Maybe ask ChatGPT, saying this is what my body looks like, and ask what's flattering.

And come to personal stylists like me?!

Is there anything else that you want to add or share, Jen?

I'd like to talk about a Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter's very different from GoFundMe. It's a more success-driven process. People can donate at different tiers, different amounts of money, and then they get something in return. And the Kickstarter campaign itself is going to fund the creation of measuring kits with a tape measure and a little booklet with drawings, explaining how to take your measurements. And then there will also be a stash of cool stickers made by a local artist here in Palermo. When people donate, I can make the kits. 

There is a potential possibility that this project is going to change the world. Let’s say in 10 years' time, you still have this booklet, you know, you still have these things from when this new clothing size was created, so I think that's quite sweet. 

And because I am German, and I've lived in England, and I now live in Italy, I'm setting up all these collaborations with different brands, local brands in Palermo. I'm collaborating with somebody in Germany, and I'm going to be collaborating with people in the UK. It’s a European collaboration. The crowdfunding campaign has a video of people taking measurements. From the measurements people  send in, I will create the clothing size and make basic patterns from them. And let's say by that time, so many people have already engaged, and so many people think it's such a great thing, that by that time, obviously, other fashion brands will have caught up on it. And then, you know, in a perfect world, they will then get in touch with me, and say they’ve seen that I have all this traction online. I'm sure this could be fashion brands who'd like to say that they're super LGBT friendly and inclusive, and that they would then want to make a collection in the new clothes size. I'm not unrealistic, I'm not saying that all brands are going to create all of their feminine clothing lines in this new clothing size. But they may do, like, a one-off collection, you know, or there might be a fashion label that specialises in this, and then they use only the sizing system.

Thanks so much for chatting.

It’s been a privilege talking to Jen. Please share this as widely and appropriately as you can. Jen has now launched his Kickstarter which you can find via the link below:

Click for details

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If you enjoyed reading this interview, you may be interested in my interview with Debi Saunders for International Women's Day 2025 about her style as a transwoman. Read here.

You can also read my other blog posts here.