Materials

Two rules about fabric, and one exception we declare.

Surplus fabric wherever it exists. Natural fibre where it does not. Nothing synthetic unless a component has no natural equivalent — and when that happens, the product page names it.

First choice: Surplus and deadstock rolls, bought whole
Second choice: Cotton, linen, silk, hemp, bamboo, wool
Never: Polyester, nylon, acrylic, or recycled plastic sold as virtue
Declared exception: Technical components with no natural equivalent, named on the piece

1st
Surplus, always: 2nd
Natural fibre: 0
Synthetics by choice

How we choose

The garment decides the fabric, not the other way round.

Every piece is drawn for one weight and one behaviour. A wide trouser needs enough mass to fall in a straight line; a bias slip needs a fabric that will move under its own weight. Get that wrong and no amount of good sewing rescues it.

So we start from the roll. When something arrives on the shelf, we handle it, hang a metre of it overnight, wash a sample, press it, and then decide what it wants to become. That is the reverse of how most collections are made, where a design is drawn first and a fabric found to approximate it.

It also means we cannot promise you a specific piece in a specific fabric forever. What we can promise is that we will not approximate. If the right fabric is gone, the piece retires.

Why surplus fabric matters How it is then built

Photography · 4:5

Fabric library: samples washed, pressed and pinned to card with the mill weight and behaviour noted.

We wash a sample before we draw anything. A fabric tells you what it will become after its first wash, not before.

The fibres

Six materials, and what each one is actually for.

Not a list of virtues. A list of behaviours, so you can tell whether a piece suits the way you live.

Cotton

Handloom and mill-woven, from 85 gsm shirting to 320 gsm twill. It takes a press, it washes indefinitely, and it gets better in the hand for the first ten washes. Our default for anything worn against the skin.

Linen

Strongest when wet, which is why it survives washing better than almost anything. It creases, and we do not treat that as a fault to be chemically corrected. Heavier weights hang instead of clinging.

Mulberry silk

Used where a piece needs to move — bias cuts, slips, linings. Cool in Indian summers despite the reputation. Hand wash cold; it dislikes heat and alkaline soap more than it dislikes water.

Hemp

Grows without irrigation or pesticide and produces a fibre closer to linen than to canvas once it has been washed a few times. We blend it with cotton for softness while keeping the weight.

Bamboo

Only mechanically processed or lyocell-route bamboo, never the viscose route, which uses carbon disulphide. Used sparingly, for jersey and lining where drape matters more than structure.

Wool

Surplus suiting, almost always. It is the fibre with the longest wearable life of anything we handle, it resists creasing without treatment, and it needs cleaning far less often than people assume.

Photography · 1:1

Sorting: reclaimed horn and shell buttons graded into matched sets, six at a time.

Trims and hardware

Buttons, buckles and metal that have already had one life.

A jacket needs six buttons that agree with each other. Ordering them new takes ten minutes. We do it the slow way, and not for sentimental reasons.

Where the trims come from

Retired tailors' chests, closing haberdashers, thrift markets, and deadstock trim lots.

The longer answer

We buy in bulk and unsorted, then grade by material, diameter, hole count and shank. A matched set of six horn buttons can take a week to assemble out of a bowl of two hundred, because horn is never uniform.

Why reclaimed rather than new

Real horn, shell and brass age at the same rate as good fabric. Moulded polyester does not.

The longer answer

Most new buttons are polyester made to resemble horn. They are dimensionally perfect and they wear badly: the coating hazes and the edges chip pale, so within two years they no longer match the garment they were sewn to.

What happens when you lose one

Write to us. We keep the remainder of every set we have used.

The longer answer

Each run is logged against its button set, and the leftovers are kept in labelled tins. If we genuinely cannot match it, we will replace the full set rather than leave you with five that agree and one that does not.

Zips, elastic and thread

Deadstock where possible. Where not, this is where our declared exception usually sits.

The longer answer

There is no natural-fibre zip. Where a piece needs one, we use deadstock metal zips, and if none exist in the right length we use a new metal zip on a polyester tape and say so on the product page. Most of our pieces avoid the problem by not having a zip at all — ties, hooks and wraps instead.