We’ve all been there—standing in a fitting room, wondering why nothing seems to fit quite right. But what if the problem isn’t your body—it’s the system that designed the clothes in the first place?

In this powerful conversation, Emily sits down with engineer-turned-entrepreneur Susan Spencer, the creator of Seamly.io, an open-source fashion software project reshaping how clothing is designed and made. They dig into why the traditional fashion industry gets sizing so wrong, the surprising role colonization played in shaping today’s sizing systems, and what it would take to make clothing truly inclusive and body-honoring.

Susan shares how her experience as a patternmaker in an all-male tech space gave her the courage to question fashion’s status quo—and how Seamly is giving power back to both creators and wearers.

Key Takeaways

• Modern sizing is based on outdated military data: Susan explains how today’s clothing sizes are built on a narrow dataset originally created for soldiers—and why that leaves most bodies out of the equation.

• The fashion industry manufactures blame: Instead of fixing flawed sizing systems or wasteful production, fashion brands push the narrative that consumers need to buy more or “fit in.”

• Open-source tools are changing who gets to create: With Seamly, Susan is making it possible for anyone to design, alter, and share patterns—breaking down barriers to entry in fashion design.

• Sewing is a form of liberation: Susan shares how making clothes from scratch can shift the way people relate to their bodies, their time, and their creativity.

• Sustainability requires system-level change: From overproduction to trend cycles, the real sustainability issues start long before a garment hits the rack—and Susan believes solutions must begin with design and manufacturing.

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Host Emily Paulsen is an accomplished entrepreneur and happily childfree woman shining a light on the often overshadowed childfree-by-choice perspective. Whether interviewing innovative experts or positioning leaders to scale through her Brand Studio, Electric Collab, Emily’s power lies in allowing people to feel seen and celebrated for who they are . She’s spent years honing the ability to deeply understand and amplify others in an honest, high-impact way. 

Learn more about Emily on her website: www.curiouslifeofachildfreewoman.com  

And connect with her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curiouslifeofachildfreewoman/ 

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The guest on this episode is Sue Spencer. She is the founder and CEO of Seamly, an open-source fashion design software company that is revolutionizing how clothing is made. With a background as a NASA systems analyst, Sue applied her problem-solving skills to an industry in desperate need of innovation—fashion.

She discovered that much of the waste, poor fit, and inefficiency in fashion stems from outdated pattern-making systems and a production model that prioritizes speed over sustainability. Seamly offers a solution: a digital, customizable design system that enables designers to create patterns tailored to real bodies, reducing fabric waste and improving fit.

Through Seamly, Sue is proving that better design tools can create a more ethical, sustainable, and functional fashion industry.

https://seamly.io  

https://linkedin.com/in/susan-l-spencer 

Learn more about Seamly and Connect with Sue online: