In fashion, questions surrounding gender swirl around the industry: Who gets to wear which clothing items? Do we still need siphoned-off menswear and womenswear runway shows? What really comprises a gender-neutral garment or fashion line? Amid those conversations, Syro emerged. Founded just three short years ago, the shoe brand's goals are not to break the rules so much as to create a new paradigm for an oft-underserved consumer demographic in the market: men and gender-nonconforming people who want to wear high heels.

When you head to the "About" section of the brand’s website, its self-description is equal parts concise and intentional. “Syro is a queer POC business based in New York City,” it reads.

“It’s simply the truth,” co-founder Henry Bae tells me. “And I think we want that really to be known because we had a fear early on that gender-nonconforming style would be eaten up by a larger mainstream in upcoming years. And we wanted to protect what was genuine about our identity and our femininity — our identity as minorities, really.”

This purposefulness, and the ease with which they articulate it, is central here. For instance, the brand does not call itself “gender-neutral” (as is the preferred term for many companies these days), but “gender-nonconforming“ instead, which is to strip the gendered modifier of its power over the clothing itself. Sure, anyone of any gender can technically wear anything — same goes for makeup, skin care, and nearly any subsection of beauty and fashion — but it is one thing for a brand to say its products are for all customers and an entirely different thing to create it with emphases on size inclusivity and gender-inclusive marketing right from the start.

Bae, who is 28 and identifies as a gender-nonconforming queer/gay man, and co-founder Shaobo Han, who is 28 and also identifies as gender-nonconforming and queer, first met in New York City in 2012 via Facebook. “Henry knew me as this loud, Asian city kid in NYC, while I revered his writing on his now-hidden blog,” Han recalls.