Our practice
Every claim on this site, with the method attached.
- Material
- Surplus rolls first; natural fibre where none suits
- Production
- Runs of 8–30, decided by the length of the roll
- Waste
- Single-layer cutting; offcuts reused above a hand's width
- Afterlife
- Repairs at cost for as long as you own the piece
- 0 m
- New fabric woven for us
- 8–30
- Garments per roll
- 1 layer
- How we cut
- ∞
- Repair window
Where surplus exists in the right weight, no fabric is made on our account at all.
Production is capped by material rather than by forecast, so nothing is made to be discounted.
Single-layer cutting wastes less than stacked cutting and lets us place patterns around flaws.
We repair what we made for as long as you own it, at cost. No time limit and no receipt required.
Claim and method
Five claims. Five methods. No adjectives.
01
Surplus fabric first, natural fibre second, nothing synthetic by choice.
The fabric we useThe method
We buy whole surplus rolls wherever they exist. Where none suits the garment we buy new, and only cotton, silk, linen, hemp, bamboo or wool. Any technical exception is named on the product page it appears on.
02
Using fabric that already exists removes its material footprint rather than reducing it.
Why surplus mattersThe method
No new water, dye, energy or land is spent on a roll that has already been woven and finished. What deadstock does not fix is sewing, shipping or how long you keep the garment, which is why the rest of this page exists.
03
Construction is our longevity strategy. Nothing else lasts if the seams do not.
How it is builtThe method
No fusible interlining, no overlocked raw edges, 4 cm of side-seam allowance and 5–6 cm hems so the garment can be altered twice. One tailor per piece, start to finish.
04
Plastic-free from the workroom to your door, including the tape.
How it reaches youThe method
Plant-starch garment bags that compost, unbleached board boxes, paper seals, soy ink, and a hang tag pressed from seed paper you can plant.
05
We repair anything we have made, for as long as you own it.
How long it lastsThe method
One free alteration in the first year, then repairs at cost indefinitely. Every piece is logged against its fabric roll and its button set so we can match both years later.
What we have not solved
The honest list.
A page like this is usually a list of achievements. Ours would be incomplete without the problems, and publishing them is the only way the rest of it stays credible.
Shipping is not clean
An international parcel flies. There is no version of that with a small footprint.
The longer answer
We consolidate orders, ship by sea for wholesale, and never offer next-day delivery — a promise that exists only to force air freight. For a single dress to another continent, air is still what happens, and calling it carbon-neutral because we bought an offset would be a claim we cannot substantiate.
Zips are a genuine gap
There is no natural-fibre zip. Where a piece needs one and no deadstock zip fits, we use new.
The longer answer
Most of our pieces avoid it by design, using ties, hooks and wraps. When a zip is unavoidable we use metal on the shortest tape available, and the product page says so plainly rather than describing the piece as fully natural.
We are not certified
Certification is priced for volume, and we do not have the volume.
The longer answer
Audit schemes cost more per year than several of our production runs are worth, and most certify a supply chain rather than a garment. Instead we publish the method and invite you to the studio. That is weaker as a badge and stronger as evidence.
Surplus fabric is finite
If demand for it grows enough, it stops being surplus and starts being a product.
The longer answer
This is the real limit on our model, and we would rather name it than pretend it scales. If deadstock became a commodity woven on purpose, we would be buying new fabric with a better story. At that point we would say so and change what we do.
Photography · 3:4
The shelf at the end of a season: what is left, chalked and dated.
We would rather publish the gaps than be found out having hidden them.
Ask us anything about how a piece was made. We will answer with specifics or say we do not know.
Write to the atelier