What we make things from

The most sustainable garment is the one that is still worn in twenty years. Everything below follows from that: where a natural material makes a piece last longer, we use it, and where it does not, we tell you what we used instead and why.

• Every cloth we choose is a natural fibre — cotton, silk or linen. Nothing in a collection piece is polyester, and we will never put it in a commission without telling you.
• Every commission is cut only after it is ordered, to one person's measurements. The chemises and shifts are the only things made before anyone asks for them, and they are made in small runs.
• Beading we apply ourselves is glass rather than plastic, faux pearls included. Cloth that arrives already beaded or sequinned is another matter.
• Wherever we can, we keep things out of landfill and recycle what is recyclable — cloth, packaging, and what arrives here from our own suppliers.
• Parcels contain no plastic.

Who makes what

Not everything is made here

The pieces cut to a person are made in this room. The pieces made in standard sizes mostly are not.

Corsets and gowns

Made here, by hand, one at a time.

These are the pieces that are cut to a person and fitted along the way. They cannot be made anywhere else, and we would not want them to be.

Chemises and shifts

Made by manufacturers we work with, and sometimes here, depending on the run. Always in standard sizes.

They are simple, they are made ahead in several sizes, and they do not need a fitting. Making them here would make them cost more without making them better.

The cloth

Natural fibres, always

Every piece is cut from cotton, silk or linen — and made twice, the first time in muslin.

Cotton coutil

The corsetry cloth. A dense cotton woven specifically to resist stretching.

A corset works by not giving. Coutil is the cloth that holds a shape under real tension for years instead of gradually surrendering to it.

Silk

Silks of every kind — taffeta, satin, dupioni, whatever the piece asks for. Some chemises are made in silk rather than cotton.

It takes a dye like nothing else and holds a shape when it is cut properly.

Linen

Woven flax.

It softens with wear instead of wearing out.

Cotton muslin and lawn

The lightweight cottons. Our chemises and shifts are cut from these, and every commission is first made up in muslin — the toile — before the real cloth is touched.

Next to the skin, a fine cotton is the whole point: it breathes, it washes, and it gets better rather than worse. As a toile, it means the fit is solved in a cloth costing a few dollars a yard rather than in silk — part of why a commission takes as long as it does, and why nothing expensive is wasted learning the shape of you.

The exceptions

Where there is plastic, and why

Some parts of a garment are not natural. Each is a deliberate choice, and in each case the reason is either that the piece lasts longer that way — or that you asked for it.

Thread

Gütermann, which is mostly polyester. Some seams are sewn with their cotton thread instead.

Polyester thread outlasts the cloth it holds together. Cotton thread degrades, and a seam that fails on a corset under tension takes the whole garment with it. A piece that has to be remade in five years is not the greener option.

Boning

German whalebone — which, despite the name, contains no whalebone at all. It is a modern plastic, sold in rolls and cut to length.

Chosen over steel deliberately. Steel bones rust, and perspiration will eventually bring that rust through to the outside of a pale silk. Whalebone is lighter, does not corrode, will not mark the cloth, and can be shaped by hand.

Interfacing

Used on occasion, and sometimes synthetic.

Where a collar, a waistband or a facing needs to hold its shape for years rather than months.

A cloth you choose yourself

If you ask for a particular fabric and it happens to be polyester — a satin lining, an outer cloth you have set your heart on — we will make the piece in it. We will also tell you plainly that what you have chosen is polyester.

It is your garment and your money. Silk satin and polyester satin can look closer than their prices suggest, and choosing the second can bring a commission down by hundreds of dollars — that is a decision for the person paying for it, not for us. What we will not do is make that choice on your behalf and stay quiet about it.

The small things

Beads, buttons, labels

The haberdashery, where the picture is genuinely mixed — and where the difference between what we choose and what arrives on a cloth matters most.

Beading we apply ourselves

Glass, wherever we can get it — including the pearls that are not real pearls. Those are glass too, not plastic.

A glass bead has weight. It sits differently on a garment, it catches the light rather than shining flatly, and it does not scuff or yellow with age.

Cloth that arrives already beaded

Sequinned and pre-beaded fabrics are plastic, and on a beaded cloth we usually cannot verify what the beading is. Where the choice is ours we look for fabrics without sequins and with glass beading — but if you have found the cloth you want, we will make the piece in it.

Sequins are plastic; there is no version of them that is not. And a mill will rarely tell you what is on a beaded fabric, so we would rather say we cannot be sure than tell you something we have not checked.

Buttons

Usually not plastic, but on occasion they are.

Some things simply are not made in anything else at the size or the colour a piece needs. When that is the case we use what exists rather than change the design around it.

Labels

Woven polyester at the moment, including the binding on the tags. We are actively trying to source cotton ones.

A label has to survive every wash the garment does, and polyester is good at that. We would rather it were cotton. We are looking.

Small notions

Some of the small fittings and tags contain plastic. We are looking for alternatives to those too.

These are the parts of a garment nobody photographs, and the ones where alternatives are hardest to find. They are on the list because they are here, not because we are happy about them.

What is left over

Keeping it out of landfill

Making one garment properly still produces cloth that is not the garment, and boxes that are not the parcel. Wherever we can, we keep it out of landfill and recycle what is recyclable — including what arrives here from our own suppliers.

Toiles

Every commission produces a mock-up in muslin that is not the finished piece. We do our best to have those fabrics recycled rather than thrown away.

A toile has done its job once the fit is right, and there is a lot of cloth in one. Sending it to landfill would undo most of the point of making things carefully.

Offcuts and scraps

What is left at the end of a piece is kept for smaller work where it can be, and recycled where it cannot.

Cutting a corset from a length of coutil leaves shapes that are still cloth. Some of them become facings, binding or a smaller piece; the rest we try to pass on rather than bin.

What arrives here

Supplier packaging too — the boxes, the bolts, the wrapping our own materials come in. We recycle what can be recycled and reuse what can be reused.

Most of the packaging that passes through an atelier never reaches a client, so it would be easy to leave out of the counting. We would rather include it.

The parcel

Packaging

This is the one place where avoiding plastic costs the garment nothing, so it is avoided completely.

The parcel

Paper, card and tissue. No plastic wrap, no bubble wrap and no plastic tape.

Packaging is thrown away by definition, so it is the one place where avoiding plastic costs the garment nothing.

Gift boxing

A proper box, tissue paper and ribbon. Optional, and never automatic.

Some pieces are gifts and should arrive looking like one. Most are not. Choosing the plain parcel is the greener choice and it is free.

One thing worth knowing

Satin is a weave, not a fibre

Satin is a weave, not a fibre. There is silk satin and there is polyester satin, and they are not the same cloth, the same drape or the same price. When we quote you for satin we will always say which one.

What we do not claim

We do not describe this house as plastic-free, because it is not. The thread is mostly polyester and the boning is plastic, and calling the work plastic-free would mean hoping you never looked closely at a seam.

Nor is this a finished list. The labels are polyester and we would rather they were cotton; some of the small notions contain plastic and we are still looking for the things that would replace them. When we find them, this page changes.

Nor do we claim to refuse polyester outright. If you want it, you can have it — some clients do, usually because it brings a commission down by hundreds of dollars, and that is a fair reason. The line is not about what you are allowed to ask for. It is about what we choose when the choice is ours, and about never letting you find out afterwards.

We would rather tell you exactly what is in the piece and let you decide what that is worth.

None of this is us saying we have got it right. There are things on this page we would like to change and have not managed to yet. We are doing our best with what we can reach, we can do better, and we intend to — and when we do, this page will say so.