Quiet clothes, with the texture doing the talking.
Texture as the design
Most of what we make is one colour, so the surface has to carry the interest: a cable that lifts off the ground, a lace that reads as shadow rather than pattern, a velour that changes when the light moves across it. We work with mills that will send a full piece for sampling rather than a swatch, because a knit behaves differently at the edge of a roll than in the middle. Each texture is photographed flat and on a body before it is approved, and the two images have to agree. If a fabric only looks right in a photograph, it does not go into production, however well it might sell.
Fit at the shoulder and the waist
A knit dress lives or dies at two points. The shoulder has to sit exactly where the seam was drafted, and the waist has to find the body without being pulled there by elastic. We block every style on a form for a full day before measuring it, so the length we publish is the length after the cloth has settled rather than the length off the machine. Puffed sleeves are drafted with the gather already calculated into the cap, which is why they hold their shape instead of collapsing at the elbow. When a sample drifts more than a centimetre from the pattern, we recut it instead of adjusting the size chart.
Made in small runs
Our production runs are short on purpose. A short run lets us check the tenth garment as carefully as the first, and it lets us stop a colour if the dye lot reads differently against the sample. It also means a restock can take a few weeks, and we would rather tell you that honestly than accept an order we cannot fill. Everything is packed by hand, with the garment folded along its own seams so it arrives the way it left the table. If something is not right, the person who answers your email can walk to the shelf, find the same style and compare it with yours.