All good love stories begin with a chance encounter. Fate comes in many shapes and sizes, but for this love story of fashion and fancy, it starts in a group chat. The University of Minnesota Class of 2020 Facebook group chat, specifically, where Tanner Richie of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and Fletcher Kasell of Two Harbors first met.

Before Richie and Kasell fell in love, moved to New York, built a fashion brand, and had their designs worn by celebs like Bad Bunny on the cover of TIME magazine or Kacey Musgraves on SNL, they were college roommates.

Richie and Kasell are the minds behind Tanner Fletcher, a New York-based fashion brand that has captured the attention of everyone from downtown party girl Julia Fox to the Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, who wore a black velvet suit with special pins attached at Monday’s Met Gala (the duo also dressed actor Jeremy Pope and the Broadway cast of The Wiz at the event). What’s even rarer than two 20-somethings falling in love and building an industry-lauded clothing line in this day and age? That would be a freshman year roommate success story.

Tanner Fletcher specializes in making genderless fashion. The two believe that their clothing can be worn by anybody, no matter the gender. Labels that push people to wear gendered pieces deter authenticity and creativity in the way we dress. “We can make women’s clothing without saying this is only for women and men’s clothing without saying this is only for men,” Kasell explained.

…

The brand is only a few years old, but you can still find Tanner Fletcher’s clothes, with their bows, lace, and ruche detailing, in three continents. For two 26-year-olds, they aren’t doing so bad for themselves. And the duo (it truly is just the two of them behind Tanner Fletcher) is just getting started.

The day that I visited Kasell and Richie’s Chelsea studio, Kasell wore a Tanner Fletcher original: a black pinstripe blazer with garter clips and lace decorated on the shoulder. He paired it with some dark blue jeans and an Asics sportstyle shoe. Richie was also wearing a pinstripe blazer and blue jeans, but matched his outfit with a black loafer instead. The duo share similarities outside of attire, too. Throughout the interview, they’d finish each other’s thoughts or help each other through an idea.

It’s funny to think, then, that they almost never roomed together. They had chatted in the DMs for a little after meeting in the new student Facebook group, but Richie expressed a hesitance to live with Kasell. After a few days of disconnection, Richie returned, telling Kasell he had missed talking. They agreed to meet and see how things went. So they met up at Spyhouse for coffee, began the conversation with the usual roommate-vetting questions (how messy are you, what time do you go to bed, etc.) and ended up spending the whole day together. They bopped around Minneapolis, sharing lunch and dinner at different Lunds and Byerly’s locations.

“We couldn’t stop talking to each other,” Kasell recounts. Before they had even moved in, enough chemistry and connection had sparked between the two that their parents grew concerned about the prospect of living with a partner for their first year of college. “It could’ve been a really bad thing, but we moved in anyways and it turned out great,” Kasell says.

Richie’s first fashion job just so happened to be at Vineyard Vines, a preppy pastel clothing brand you’ll catch primarily on the bodies of frat bros and people with beach houses. At the retailer’s Galleria location, Richie worked among said frat bros, some stay-at-home moms, and the “few random gays,” as he remembers it. The employees were required to wear the brand’s clothes on the job, but Richie and a few of the other feminine men, as he recalls it, were spending their allotment on the women’s clothing. The women’s pants fit them better—“We all hated the men’s pants.”

“Growing up we both had experiences where we would want to be a little bit more adventurous and be fine buying something out of the women’s section, but you’re often directed to the men’s section, like, before you even have a chance to wander,” Richie said.

Now their collections blend bold cuts, feminine touches, and masculine shapes, and are worn by anybody who can afford such carefully designed clothing. “If you’re comparing it to New York City neighborhoods, Tanner Fletcher is Bushwick and the Upper East Side,”—that is, Como and Edina—“it’s this merging of two different communities,” Kasell says. It’s a boxy cut with lace detailing, a blend of vintage and modern. Their younger clientele view the brand, in Kasell’s words, as new and interesting, while the older clientele see the clothes as nostalgic. Tanner Fletcher’s clothes are like that one vintage store find in some random Minnesota suburb that just so happens to be worn by every tapped-in New York fashion girl out east.

They recently launched their wedding collection, which Kasell described as a natural extension of the brand. The collection, which features French lace gowns, baby blue velvet blazers, their much beloved bow blazer, ruched tuxedo shirts, and a gown with old love letters printed onto it, is made for a niche but growing market of customers who want to stray from the David’s Bridals and Men’s Wearhouses of wedding apparel—and for queer couples who have trouble finding attire for their wedding wardrobe.

On top of the wedding collection, they also sell their vintage finds on their website. Both Kasell and Richie are avid thrifters and flea market attendees, raised on Minnesota institutions like Hunt and Gather and Goodwill, and they even get some help from Richie’s mom, who back in Wisconsin scouts for Tanner Fletcher-worthy finds at vintage shops to send to her son.

The brand has earned its share of accolades, even in its infancy. In 2023, Tanner Fletcher was recognized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the duo became finalists for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. After that, Nordstrom began stocking the brand. UK department store Selfridges sells Tanner Fletcher. They have a large customer base in Seoul, South Korea, and they’re launching with IT, a multi-brand fashion boutique in Hong Kong, as well as Market Highland Park in Dallas.

So what’s next for the budding high fashion brand? They’ll keep on designing new collections, or as Richie put it, “new rooms in the mansion we’re building” and honing their skills. They might even put on a fashion show this fall.

It’s rewarding to see their clothes on famous people (and of course, not bad for business), but the duo doesn’t have a dream celebrity they’d like to dress in head-to-toe Tanner Fletcher. “I want to see an authentic person just strutting their stuff on the street in my designs,” Kasell tells me. Or maybe even down the aisle, passing down the love and labor of one love story to another, as if it’s an heirloom.