Fashion for the Field and the Future of Women’s Sporting Style

Upland Bespoke founder Kathryn Beach doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t building something. As a child, she was the kid at the end of the driveway selling whatever she could dream up. That instinct—to see a gap, imagine something better, and then bring it to life—still fuels her work today with Texas-based Upland Bespoke, a brand she describes as “fashion for the field.”

What Beach has created is more than a clothing line; it’s a quiet revolution in how women show up outdoors: confident, capable, and distinctly feminine. 

Before there were shooting vests and field coats, there were heirloom baby clothes. Beach’s first company, Baby Bespoke, was a highly focused niche line: zero to 12 months only, sold through Neiman Marcus stores nationwide. Think cashmere blankets, smocked gowns, engraved silver, fine stationery—the kinds of pieces a family keeps for generations. Many of those Baby Bespoke items were made domestically, and Beach built long-standing relationships with American manufacturers. These relationships are what she still leans on nearly two decades later.  

For 20 years, Beach attended an annual event on South Texas’s storied King Ranch, where guests bring their sartorial A-game to the field. She loved the tradition, the camaraderie, the South Texas spectacle of it all—but year after year, she never quite felt like she had the “right” thing to wear. The market offered two extremes: hyper-functional pieces borrowed from the men’s side of the closet, or novelty “pink camo” that didn’t align with her taste or the seriousness of the sport. 

She wanted something else: functional, flattering, and unapologetically feminine. 

Then she had a dream. Literally. In it, a woman held up a vest and said, “You would love this.” Beach woke up, grabbed a pencil, and sketched it from memory. That drawing went straight to her New York workroom, the same team she’d trusted for Baby Bespoke. The result became Upland Bespoke’s signature vest: longer, leaner, with pockets that lay flat, a stand-up collar, and the now-famous “silhouette cinch” at the back to fine-tune the fit. 

Beach wore that first vest to King Ranch, imagining it as a one-off for her own wardrobe. Instead, she left with a stack of orders. A subsequent event in Houston produced another tower of requests. That was the moment, as she puts it, when she realized she had “a tiger by the tail.” 

Beach hears a version of the same question from women over and over: “I’m curious about shooting or hunting… but what do I wear?” Thus, Upland Bespoke’s tagline, “fashion for the field,” is rooted in answering this question, while simultaneously acknowledging that feeling good in what you wear is directly related to how you show up. With confidence. Ready for adventure. Knowing you belong.

She’s particularly interested in the women who have never held a shotgun, who are trying something new in midlife or later, and want to feel both safe and seen. When a woman pulls on an Upland Bespoke vest before stepping into the field, Beach hopes she feels exactly what one San Antonio customer did—a woman who had long been relegated to men’s gear cut like a “refrigerator box.” 

When that customer tried on an Upland Bespoke vest, Beach remembers a “moonbeam moment.” The woman looked in the mirror and said, “I actually feel good in this. I can see myself wearing this in the field.” That, Beach says, is the heart of the brand: confidence through fit, not just through function. 

The line is designed with real bodies in mind—from petite women who’ve been stuck in boys’ sizes to double-XL customers who’ve had no thoughtful options. The silhouette cinch, extended size range, and distinctly feminine tailoring turn a practical garment into something genuinely beautiful. 

If fit and function are one pillar of Upland Bespoke, American manufacturing is the other. Beach is emphatic about keeping production exclusively in the United States, working with the same domestic partners she’s trusted since her Baby Bespoke days. For her, “fashion meets field” also means fashion meets place—a line rooted in the landscapes and traditions that inspire it, from the Piney Woods of East Texas to the rugged quail country of the South Texas brush. 

As Upland Bespoke approaches its tenth year, Beach isn’t interested in chasing trends. Instead, she’s leaning further into “experiential moments for women”—day shoots, sporting-clay events, and gatherings where instruction, camaraderie, and style coexist naturally. The clothes are part of it, but they’re not the whole story.