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Photo Courtesy of Lexi Miller
Alexis Benson was biking with a friend when she got the idea to create Lexi Miller, an athletic wear brand dedicated to creating cycling clothes for women.
“I was on a bike ride with a friend of mine and my background is in interior design and so is hers, and she told me, ‘Oh this girl I work with just started her own clothing line she does stuff for women who surf—you should just do your own,’” said Benson.
Benson got into cycling after discovering a lower back injury that would have made it painful to continue training for the marathon that she’d been working towards. After taking spin classes and missing the outdoors, she bought a road bike.
“By that fall, I’d done three century rides, that’s 300 miles,” said Benson, “I was kind of hooked on it. I just needed the right clothes.”
Photo Courtesy of Lexi Miller
Benson found that proper cycling clothes were difficult to find.
“There weren’t any good options for high quality, just good looking but simple and sophisticated women’s cycling apparel,” said Benson, “It was only Lululemon, I think, was creating attractive women specific workout apparel.”
She added that most cycling gear was based off of men’s designs, not catered to the female form.
“A lot of cycling jerseys and shorts are based on what the guys wear,” said Benson, “and they give it a little bit more of a waist.”
So Benson started from scratch. She sourced fabric from Italy, France, and Switzerland, paying careful attention to the stretch, recovery, compression, and weight.
“A lot of the apparel that I was seeing was just really cheap,” said Benson, “The quality of the textiles is so important.”
She also focused on making the construction more tailored to a woman’s body.
“Not just modifying a men’s jersey and giving it a shorter waist, a more narrow waist, and then putting wider hips in the shorts—that just didn’t really work,” she said.
The paneling in the Lexi Miller jerseys don’t just use the typical front-back-side-side, plus sleeves and a collar, that typical jerseys have; Benson focused on adding curved panels to the sides of the hourglass jersey to accentuate the waist, adding a deep V-neck, and keeping a very clean style.
“It’s still sophisticated, its athletic, its functional which is paramount to everything,” said Benson, “So we just added a lot of detail throughout the construction as opposed to taking a very clean silhouette and then printing things on it.”
Lexi Miller also offers sizes 2-12 instead of XS-XL.
“We’re sized 2-12 which makes the sizing more relatable to your clothes from the real world,” said Benson, “and it also creates more of an accurate fit.”
The brand features simple, streamlined gear, a far cry from the patterned workout wear that Benson was finding.
“I like to say we’re feminine, not girly,” said Benson, “We don’t need to print flowers on everything or actually anything.”
The official Lexi Miller site launches today. For more information on Benson and her brand, take a look at the Lexi Miller blog here.
-by Kari Sonde