About Us
THE TRUST
LAYER FOR
FASHION
A fashion discovery and review
platform that uses body
measurements to help you shop
with confidence.
platform that uses body
measurements to help you shop
with confidence.
I - Etymology
A name with two meanings.
Suede
/ SWEID /
noun. A softened leather, brushed to reveal its inner texture. Considered, tactile, quiet in its luxury.
Swayed
/ SWEID / - Said the same way
Verb. To be moved toward something because of what you know, not what you were told.
The name holds both. A material chosen with intention - worn by those who notice the difference, who value craft over churn. And a small act of persuasion, the kind that happens when you find something that actually fits.
We are in the business of being persuaded with data. Not by a headline, not by a trend cycle, not by a stranger whose body is nothing like yours. By evidence. By someone you share a silhouette with, who bought the thing, wore it, and told the truth.
To shop per suede is to be moved by firsthand experience - toward the right thing, for the right reason.
II - Our Origin
A name with two meanings.
Before it was Suede, it was a series of questions asked in a digital shopping cart - will this actually fit me? Is it worth the price? Can I really trust the brand?
The internet has made fashion infinitely more accessible and infinitely harder to buy well. We are surrounded by imagery and short on evidence. Reviews are anonymous, sizing charts lie, and the person modeling the dress almost never looks like the person considering it.
Suede began as a direct answer to that gap. A platform built on a simple premise: reviews should come from people who share your measurements. Because fit is often the first question, and every question after it depends on getting that one right.
Today, Suede is built around four rooms - The Capsule, a curated directory of brands worth knowing; The Lookbook, a discovery feed of measurement-matched reviews; The Collective, a community powered by Suede's proprietary Match algorithm; and The Consign, peer-to-peer resale for pieces passed on.
Join the community, and instantly experience the power of Suede.
0%
chance of online apparel orders being returned to the seller
$0 - $0
lost per returned product
0%
of consumers return clothing they purchased online due to poor fit
III - OUR FOUNDER
Kikiola
Founder & CEO
I built the platform I wanted to shop on.
I'm Kikiola - ex-McKinsey, cybersecurity professional by day, fashion girl the rest of the time. I love finding a good piece, but I don't love the hours it takes to find one, or the gamble that comes after - the sizing chart that doesn't line up with the garment, the product photos that doesn't line up with reality, the reviews that simply don't exist... or if they do, they don't have any sizing context.
Somewhere along the way the math stopped working. Brands want full price and give you nothing in return - no transparency on fit, no real information on quality, just a campaign shot and a size guide written by AI. The cost of being wrong got too high, and scrolling TikTok for an hour to crowdsource a size wasn't a lifestyle I wanted.
Suede is my answer. A place to find brands worth knowing, and to read reviews from people who actually share my measurements. I built it to fix one of my biggest pain points as a shopper - and, honestly, to find out where you shop, how you shop there, and what's worth the spend. Call it enabling my bad habits. I call it maximizing my time.