Out of the Blue

A bespoke clothier in Oxford hits it big around the country.

Written by Eugene Stockstill | Photos by Joe Worthem

The burgeoning Oxford clothier Blue Thread Project wants you to know that you don’t have to settle for something off the rack when you buy your next suit.

“I love being able to make people feel confident in their clothes,” said Chandler Rios, chief executive officer of Blue Thread. “That really brings me joy to see someone who has never had a custom suit put that on, and their confidence goes through the roof.”

Since 2019, Blue Thread Project has gone from an idea forming inside the mind of the Rev.

Nathaniel Rios, a Pentecostal church planter trying to put food on the table, to a worldwide phenomenon. Last year The Wall Street Journal had a story about the company.

Blue Thread has around 3,000 clients in 40 states and five countries, and, last year, it hand-delivered about 2,000 suits by way of some 300,000 traveled miles. Not bad for a business that started out of the trunk of a car.

But first things first. Why even bother with buying a bespoke suit?

“Bespoke matters,” Chandler said. “A lot of people don’t really know about custom clothing, and that’s why we started this, to make people aware of what they are missing.”

The experience of purchasing a bespoke suit from Blue Thread works like this. Interested customers get in contact with the clothier to start the process. Those who live near the company’s Oxford location at the super-swanky Edison at Colonnade Crossing on University Boulevard can just drive there. Those who don’t live nearby can book a two-night stay in Oxford that includes a custom fitting for a suit and shirt, as well as fine dining and other amenities. Blue Thread does make house calls, too.

But regardless of the scenario, some things don’t change from customer to customer. First, measurements are taken by hand, and then in consultation with a personal clothier, the look and the cut of the suit is decided. Want a fuller cut, as opposed to the skinny cuts of most contemporary styles? No problem. Feel like impressing everyone with a vest, too? Done.

The order then gets stitched together by hand in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Vietnam as if it was just for the individual customer because, well, it is.

“It’s more than a suit,” Nathaniel said.  “We’re going to give you a custom experience.”

Outside of Mississippi, Blue Thread has a rowhouse in Washington D.C. near Capitol Hill called the Blue House. The business has about 400 clients in the D.C. area alone, and the Blue

House also offers meeting space and other perks for members.

“We did the staff of Trump’s campaign right before he got elected and also some who work

for Vance,” Chandler said.

The D.C. location offers a two-day retreat experience, as well. One customer flew all the way from Anchorage, Alaska, just for a fitting.

So how did all this get started?

Nathaniel and his family moved to Oxford in 2014 to plant the Wellspring Community Church, and he needed extra work to make ends meet. One of the jobs he took for a while was selling suits for Joseph A. Bank, while he was also working for the church.

Nathaniel, who also travels the country conducting leadership conferences, met some interesting people along the way, like former Ole Miss standout shortstop Erroll Robinson, later drafted by the Dodgers. Robinson one day asked him to fix him up with a nice jacket, not knowing that he wasn’t working anymore with Joseph A. Bank, which had a buy-one-get-one-free sale at the time.

“I was like, ‘I’m just going to get this guy a jacket,’” Nathaniel said. Robinson’s reaction? He said, “Hey, you need to be my personal clothier.”

That one comment was the genesis of the Blue Thread Project, which refers to a verse in the Bible, Numbers 15:38, about decorations on ancient garments.

2019 was the inaugural year for the fledgling clothier, and 2020 during the pandemic was a big learning year. The year after that, “things started taking off,” Nathaniel said, and by 2022, he found himself at a golf tournament in West Point, put together by Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, and was arranging suit business at the state level.

Another big break happened after he met former Ole Miss head football coach Hugh Freeze, who later took a job at Liberty University, then one at Auburn. The two had exchanged cell numbers, and one day, Blue Thread went to the university campus where they took measurements to outfit the whole Auburn football team.

In February 2023, “we measured 77 guys in eight hours,” Nathaniel said, and when they delivered the clothes, only 14 pieces had to be remade due to weight fluctuations.

A combination of connections at the local, regional and international levels have helped create the Blue Thread experience. Today, in addition to its own products, Blue Thread carries clothes by other upscale designers like Zegna. Shoes, belts, shirts, ties — they’ve got it all.

They’re looking into carrying women’s clothes, too, and they have connections in Italy that may bring in more new products one day soon.

The company’s claim: You can become a whole new, custom-clothed person in about a month.

“Even for an average body who can buy off the rack, there is still always something that is not perfect, and that’s where we come in,” Chandler said.