“Made in London” is crazy but we do it anyway

We make everything in London and the broader United Kingdom. At the moment, our network of suppliers is so local we regularly walk between the various specialists who contribute to the development of our garments, from fabric merchant to button coverer to pattern maker to sample room. Our cotton garment carriers are also made in the UK. The elastic tape that goes into our trousers is made in the UK. Our hang tags are cut and letterpressed in the UK.

There are manifold reasons not to manufacture in the UK. In fact, sometimes, it feels as if there are simply no good reasons to manufacture domestically. It’s expensive, for one. London is probably among the most expensive places in the world to manufacture garments, especially when working with small-scale, ethical ateliers.

The supply chain here is fragmented, so instead of being able to show up at a factory with a sketch and have them do everything from pattern development to production, in the UK, the process involves commissioning a number of disparate specialists and manually moving production through each stage. You know those walks between specialists we mentioned? They often involve lugging patterns, samples, and bolts of fabric in suitcases across cobbled streets.

Every day, we toy with the idea of offshoring production to a more affordable and scalable locale like Italy or Portugal, but then we remind ourselves of our reasons for manufacturing domestically:

“Made in London” is special

Luxury fashion is full of clothing bearing the “Made in Italy” label, but how many say “Made in London” or even “Made in England”?

Fragmentation = specialization

Because we have ownership over each stage of the process, we have the freedom to choose the very best specialists for each step. This means that we can work with best-in-class pattern makers and machinists who specialize in a particular category or skill. And because we’re manually moving things along, it also means there’s quality control at every step of the way.

Doing our own sourcing furthermore allows us to find the best trims for our garments instead of relying on someone else to do it for us. No one else will care about the little, seemingly inconsequential details that go into a garment as much as the person who created it, and whose name must now be attached to it. Things like: does the zipper glide smoothly and is it sturdy; is the pocket fabric silky enough to slip your hands in and out of easily; or, is it made out of natural fibers?

Access to tailoring resources

The UK is the birthplace of modern tailoring and our location in London gives us access to resources that have developed here over centuries. There are textile mills in Yorkshire that date to the Industrial Revolution, there are companies making polished buttons for the military in Birmingham, and there is still a family-owned buttonholer in Soho that has been in operation for over 100 years.

Relationship building in person

A fashion brand is a creative partnership. One thing we never fully appreciated before we started is how difficult it is to communicate what you have in mind even if it seems crystal clear in your head. And fashion is so physical we just couldn’t imagine discussing things like fit and drape over Zoom.

As such, we always make the effort to meet with our team in person and we view these relationships as long-standing partnerships that will only get better with time.

Small, artisanal scale

Considering the amount of effort we put into our work, we want our garments to be rarefied instead of mass produced, and the small, artisanal scale of UK manufacturing suits us well in this regard. This is a land of individual makers motivated more by passion than a paycheck, and operating on an intimate scale gives us the freedom to collaborate with these artisans.

Easier is not always better

Maybe it’s the Puritan work ethic inculcated in us from young but we believe the best things always require a little bit of a grind.

The possibility of offshoring looms with every new collection. Until then, we’ll keep grinding across those cobblestones in the pursuit of creating something rarefied—something special.