Jeff Bender just wanted leggings that his transgender daughter felt comfortable wearing. A few years ago, the former co-owner of Chesterfield’s St. Louis Wine Market started researching flat-fronted leggings—ultimately, to no avail. Then, he started talking to family and friends about a bubbling idea he couldn’t kick: a kids’ clothing line made solely with the intention of helping children feel comfortable in their skin, just being themselves as kids. The result was a fast-paced journey that would turn the local shop owner and dad into a touring author and clothing designer.
The First Stitch
It all started when a friend of a friend caught wind of Bender’s ruminations and made a few introductions. In less than a month, Bender found himself in a meeting with the CEO and COO of locally based global apparel manufacturer Stars Design Group.
From there, Lion+Owl took flight.
“I didn’t know how to sew; I didn’t know anything about apparel,” Bender says. “But I had this awesome idea, and I knew that it would work, and I knew that it would benefit kids.”
Bender and his new team went to work on market research and product testing, and what they found reiterated Bender’s initial assumption: Out of 181 brands studied, not one offered the kind of quality, gender-free clothing he was in search of for his family. “Apparel has no gender,” he says. “We’re the ones assigning a boys’ section and a girls’ section. And the kids don’t care—they’re choosing what they wear by the color and how it feels.”
As part of marketing research, it was recommended that he write a book and use the tour as promotion for the line. “I was like, OK, I mean, I’ve never written a book, but I’ll try,” recalls the father of two. “I ended up writing two books: a grandparents/grandkids book and a commentary book about raising a transgender daughter, which ended up being named one of the year’s best books by St. Louis Public Radio, as voted on by local librarians. It was an incredible honor.”
Bender went on to travel with his books all over the United States, at events in community centers where he would speak to parents and grandparents about what it means to be an ally and a supportive parent, all while designing and testing what would become the first line of apparel for Lion+Owl, which officially launched in August 2024.
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The Clothes
The quality and thoughtfulness of the clothing line is a point of pride for Bender. In particular, Bender is proud of the leggings that started it all.
“We really revolutionized kids’ leggings,” he says. “The number of adults that have even asked me to make these leggings in adult sizes is unbelievable. I would be a millionaire if I made adult leggings.”
Beyond the leggings, Bender strived to make every choice intentional for the function-first clothing designs, from tagless tops to seamless structures to fidget-friendly features. “We’re taking away pain points for kids,” he says. “Every piece in the collection, every feature, every design, every pattern—it’s there to serve a purpose. There’s real research and real science behind the way that the clothes are made.”
Bender’s youngest child is sensory-sensitive, which inspired extensive efforts to create clothes that offered distraction-free wear. “For kids for whom those types of things bother them, you’re either fixing it or you’re not. There’s no middle ground. Sensory is their whole life, so it needed to be perfect.”
The fabrics and materials used to make the clothing, therefore, had to be soft and high-quality to the touch. As Bender says, “We’re not making cheap clothes; we’re making clothes that kids feel good in.”
The inclusivity of the brand extends to its sizing as well. “We created a new category called All Kids Plus,” Bender says. “The hope of All Kids Plus is that other apparel brands and department stores, such as Target, can adopt the notion of what All Kids Plus means, and that is gender-neutral sizing for all kids. So parents know that, if their kid wears a medium and it’s an All Kids Plus brand, then a medium is going to fit them.”
Lion+Owl clothing often comes adorned with its taglines: “Be Bright. Be Comfy. Be Brave.” It’s a message of positivity that Bender says he wants to instill in his own children: Riley, age 14, and Caden, age 11.
“When you’re younger, and you’re just kinda figuring out how the world works as a kid, the world is wide open,” he says. “Life is just about having fun, being with your friends, and playing. And at that age, the clothes you wear—it’s like your armor. It’s your uniform. It’s what makes you feel good and confident and helps you tell the world who you are. It’s important for kids to be able to make those choices about what they would like to wear, what kind of armor suits them.”
Allowing them to make that choice, Bender adds, sets them up for success as they grow and make more important decisions.
“A confident kid is a happy kid,” says Bender. “A confident kid does better in school. A confident kid does better at making friends. We want that for the kids, all the kids. And the easiest way to make a kid confident and brave and comfortable is in the clothes that they wear.”
The Support
As Bender looks to grow the business, he says he’s seeking support and boosting awareness about the endeavor. “That’s the hardest part: We have these amazing clothes for all kids, and it’s just me. So I struggle with getting the word out to enough people to sustain the business model. We’re coming up to our one-year anniversary, and I have all of the clothes in my basement. A true small business, a real family affair: 225 cartons dropped off in our driveway.”
Bender says he would welcome hearing from St. Louis businesses that might be interested in partnering. “I’m a one-person crew here,” he notes.
If it weren’t for the overwhelming feedback, Bender says he may have lost confidence in the whirlwind entrepreneurial experience. “This one mom in Colorado emailed me and said, ‘You don’t understand—I have to go into my kids’ book bag at the end of the day when they’re asleep to steal it out of the book bag to wash the hoodie and dry it before the next morning, because if I don’t put the hoodie back in the book bag, my son freaks out. It’s his safety blanket.’ Or for the books, when I talk to parents or grandparents and they’ve said, ‘You’ve opened dialogue up with our family.’ When you hear that kind of stuff, you can’t give up. It’s too awesome.”
Helping families find their love and connection for one another may be Bender’s greatest joy. “For me and my wife, having a transgender child has never been an issue for us,” he says. “But of course, sometimes people do put up walls, and I don’t think it’s because they’re necessarily bad people. I think they just don’t know, and sometimes it takes a stranger or someone outside of your social circle to help open your eyes and realize the important thing is just making my kids happy.”
Bender’s passion stems from a belief in “the importance of letting our kids decide who they’d like to be.
“I’m just learning as I go,” he adds. “It’s definitely been an eye-opening first year. But it’s been wonderful, because I know that what I’m doing is helping kids and families. Even if it’s not through the clothes, it could be through the books, the allyship, the example of being a dad who’s being supportive. It’s important that my kids realize they can be whoever they want to be, and their parents are going to support them.
“I’m hoping that when they get older, they realize that I quit my full-time, salaried job to dedicate my time to creating a better world for the two of them to grow up in,” Bender says of his two children. “I hope they realize that they were the ones who gave me real purpose… I look forward to the day that we can look back on this and know that all of us, our whole family, played a role in making the space that we take up a little bit better.”
