Craftsmanship
Most of what you are paying for is on the inside.
- Workroom
- One cutter, four tailors, one presser
- Per garment
- One tailor, start to finish. No production line
- By hand
- Hems, plackets, armholes, rolled edges, buttonholes
- Never
- Fusible interlining, overlocked raw edges, glued hems
The principle
Build it so it can be changed.
A garment can be built to be finished or built to be continued. The difference is allowance: fabric left in the seams and hems that has no purpose today and every purpose in five years.
Ours carry 4 cm at the side seams and 5 to 6 cm at the hems. That costs roughly a fifth of a metre per garment, which on a run of fifteen is three metres — a garment and a half we chose not to make. It is the single most expensive decision in the workroom and the one you are least likely to notice.
What it buys is range. A trouser that can be lengthened works with flats and heels, survives a change in body, and can be handed to somebody taller. A garment with no allowance has decided in advance how long you get to keep it.
Photography · 4:5
Inside a side seam: 4 cm of allowance pressed open, bound in offcuts of the same cloth.
You can see a fused front from across a room after two years. That is the whole argument for doing it the slow way.
Decision by decision
Where the money goes, and what the alternative would have been.
The usual way
How we do it
Raw edges overlocked. Fast, and it frays and thickens with every wash.
French seams on light fabric, bound seams on heavy. No raw edge anywhere inside.
Collars and fronts fused with adhesive interlining, which bubbles after a few cleans.
Woven cotton canvas, cut on the bias and stitched in. It softens rather than failing.
Hems folded once at about a centimetre. Shortened once, never lengthened.
Hems 5–6 cm deep, so length can change twice across the garment's life.
Side seams cut with 1 cm allowance. No room to adjust as a body changes.
4 cm at the side seams, enough to be let out twice.
Buttonholes machined at speed, then cut open and left to fray.
Machined, then the edges finished by hand so they hold their shape.
Bias pieces cut and sewn the same day, so they drop unevenly later.
Bias pieces hung 48 hours before hemming, so they settle before they are cut.
One garment passes through eight pairs of hands on a line.
One tailor from first seam to last, so nothing is somebody else's problem.
Pressed once at the end, to look right in the photograph.
Pressed at every stage. Most of what reads as quality is pressing.
Photography · 3:4
Pressing: a shoulder shaped over the ham in stages rather than flattened in one pass.
The hand-finished parts
Four places where a machine is faster and worse.
Hems
Rolled and stitched by hand on anything fine, so no stitch shows from the front.
The longer answer
A machined hem on silk puckers, because the feed dogs pull the bias. A hand-rolled hem at 3 mm takes our tailor about forty minutes on a full-length skirt and lies flat for the life of the garment.
Plackets
Turned and stitched by hand, two rows, twelve stitches to the inch.
The longer answer
The placket is the vertical line down the front of a shirt and the first thing the eye reads. Machined, it ripples between buttons. Stitched by hand with the tension set by feel, it sits flat.
Armholes
Set and finished by hand so the sleeve turns without pulling at the shoulder.
The longer answer
A sleeve has more fabric in its head than the armhole it goes into. Distributing that ease by machine produces small tucks; by hand it produces a smooth curve that lets you raise your arm without lifting the whole jacket.
Buttonholes
Machined for strength, then finished by hand so the edges hold.
The longer answer
A purely hand-worked buttonhole is beautiful and takes twenty minutes. We compromise deliberately: machine the bar for durability, then hand-finish the cut edge, which is the part that frays.
The workroom
Six people, and a piece that never leaves the room.
01
Cutting, single layer
Marked in chalk and cut one layer at a time. Slower than cutting six, but it is the only way to place a pattern around a flaw in surplus fabric — and it wastes less.02
Offcuts sorted before sewing starts
Anything above a hand's width is labelled and shelved for facings, bindings, ties and pocket bags. Smaller scraps are bagged by fibre for a quilting collective.03
One tailor, one garment
The same person sews it from first seam to last. It is slower and the accountability is total: there is nobody to hand an unfinished sleeve to.04
Pressing at every stage
Seams pressed open as they are made, shoulders shaped over a ham, nothing flattened. Most of what reads as expensive tailoring is pressing rather than stitching.05
Inspection inside and out
Checked on the reverse first. If a seam is not right it is unpicked and redone, which occasionally costs a week and always costs less than sending it out.06
Logged against its fabric
Every finished piece is recorded against its roll and its button set, so we can repair or replace hardware years later without guessing.