Travail en Famille

[wax]

So I ended up getting the Aviator silk scarf for mama wax for christmas (well, I ordered it about two days before christmas so she got it mid Jan, but lets ignore these minor details). it came in a nice simple cardboard box and had some cards which explained the story behind TEF and the Aviator Scarf in particular, which is good because then I didn't have to bungle through a paraphrasing of what was on the website. Can confirm that the silk is very nice indeed, and mama wax seemed to feel the same way and she knows more about silk than I do.

In the end it was kind of fitting to get the aviator scarf as it had to travel about halfway around the world to get from the UK to Margaret River (9,000 miles or so)



lighting in this photo doesn't really do it justice, the colours are really nice.

as an added bonus the packaging had some twine which we gave to Lily:



@oucho

[oucho]

Hey care-tags, we are working on a new collection which we hope to release in March. It's very exciting and features some great new stuff.

In the meantime me and my mum got together last week to take some photos of how we style our silk scarves for men. We didn't have time to do many scarf shoots for the lookbook and we wanted to show how we actually wear them. (sorry for my face)

[vgtbls]

Don't ever apologize for your face, you handsome bastard

[mknro]

Haven't been on c-t a while, so forgot to say that my mum loved her birthday present scarf back in November. It was even more beautiful in person

[oucho]

Hey guys, firstly BAD NEWS: The Lily and the Bird collection is being delayed for a September release. This is due to multiple production issues that were out of our control, in order to not have to compromise on the new collection we have had to delay. It will be worth the wait!

GOOD NEWS: we finally managed to get the Cloche bags made! I have written a little blog post about the long journey that went into making it: http://t-e-f.co.uk/blogs/news/113342214 ... cloche-bag . Basically this was one of the first products we developed but actually getting it made in a factory was a nightmare! I feel like it worked out pretty good in the end though




Also to anyone who has seen me walking around with an Aviator print Cloche bag THAT WAS A REALLY POORLY MADE SAMPLE! These are a lot better.

We also have this neat woven badge!


The title for the Lily and the Bird was originally Solvitur Ambulando, and it was all going to be about walking. In the end we changed direction but we still really wanted to do something about walking, and so the woven badge. Fun fact all the plants on the badge are herbs that are used to brew absinthe. The illustration is by Tom Saffill who is a young illustrator I met through tagging! I'm going to sew mine to my green swebay trousers. And now, Kierkegaard:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

[oucho]

Thanks so much to everyone who bought a badge, show us pics of where you put it!

In other news the new collection has been renamed Kierkegaard's Wardrobe and is now up on our website! We've just got our 'home' range up for now but we have finished clothing on hangers in our studio just waiting to be photographed and posted online, so we really are actually finally releasing the collection. Here is a bit of blurb about the collection:

We are very pleased to announce our new collection: Kierkegaard's Wardrobe. Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher of the nineteenth century and is considered to be the father of existentialism, and this is his wardrobe. The collection is a humorous yet sincere play on the values of stoicism embracing the works of Kierkegaard, Kafka and company.

Once again we delved into the language of flowers, the Victorians attributed meaning to a range of plants and flowers and used them as a form of covert communication in bouquets or buttonholes. We have revived it as a subtle, romantic and light hearted form of symbolism. The collection features hops, meaning 'injustice', and box, meaning 'stoicism'.

Although the collection is titled Kierkegaard's Wardrobe we are releasing our new home range first, with the fashion collection to follow later this month. The home range features fine bone china made in Stoke-on-Trent and Shantung silk cushions. Head over to http://t-e-f.co.uk/collections/kierkegaards-wardrobe to see the full collection and read all about it.

The core idea of the collection for me was to say that we were making things that loudly declare stoicism, and then make things that don't do that. One of the interesting things about referencing the Victorian language of flowers is that you end up working within a fairly arbitrary range of plants to send a message. There are reasons why each plant or flower was originally given it's meaning, but that's often obscure and certainly not common knowledge. So we have a shirt covered in hops, because they mean injustice in the language of flowers, but no one is ever going to clock that, and I like that because it's a form of silence. Yet there's still something kind of intriguing about a shirt covered in hops or box because it's unusual. So the idea was to create an interesting silence.

We have added fine bone china ceramics and Shantung silk cushions. I wish it photographed better but the silk is super lovely, it has a beautiful slub, we are making some shirts out of it too.

[oucho]

We have become true artisans.

Our clothes are very complicated to make, they involve working with difficult fabrics like silk and intense print placement. Every panel of fabric for one of our pieces is designed individually and has to be cut and sewn correctly. To put this into context one of our shirts requires about 21 panels of fabric. We trusted the factory who we worked with to make the Notre Jardin collection, they paid their machinists over the London living wage and as a result attracted really excellent workers. However they've changed their focus to sourcing Eastern European factories for British designers, rather than manufacturing themselves. We had a mad dash around various factories, but it started to feel like we were going to have to pay an awful lot with very little guarantee that the clothes would be made right. So we decided to make the collection ourselves, or rather my mum did because I am hopeless at sewing. She learned sewing from her mum and often makes her own clothes. She is not as good as the machinists we worked with before and she even sewed a sleeve on upside down yesterday, but don't worry any small mistakes will be completely outshone by the charm and sincerity of cottage industry! It also means that we can get all the small details right, the print placement perfect and we don't have to whack up our prices. I don't know how sustainable it is but for now it's really cool!

The clothes are a series of prints and pieces that reference stoicism and Kierkegaard's treatise on the lilies and the birds but it's more playful than austere and is supposed to be tongue in cheek rather than moralising. Personally I think the whole thing is quite funny, we kind of wanted to make clothes that no one would be quite sure who they were made for without being too obvious about it. Anyway we have trousers, we redesigned our coat, we made a t-shirt and a tie and we have new fabrics. The pinstripe wool is a heavy superfine wool made in Huddersfield, it's very nice. We have made some shirts out of shantung silk which is a thick slubby silk, it's very nice. We have a digitally printed faux-suede that's like almost waterproof too which we made coats out of.



ANyway you can check out what we've put online so far here: http://t-e-f.co.uk/collections/kierkegaards-wardrobe I hope you guys like it and if you do we always super appreciate people spreading the word!

[oucho]

@pirxthepilot I still cut some of the clothes out and I made our tie pattern

[tomsfood]

is this the adult equivalent of having your mom write your science paper for you?

just kidding! looks great! glad you figured out a way to get it made!

[oucho]

just to let anyone know who doesn't follow us on instagram or subscriber to our mailing list, we are running a 50% sale on the notre jardin and terres inconnues collections online, just use the code: wintersale

[alby]

hey oucho or others - how warm are the silk scarves? considering getting one of the longer ones and am curious if it would hold a candle to the warmth of wool equivalent.

[oucho]

Bagged out silk scarves are quite warm, we use a pretty heavy weight of silk and as it's bagged out the silk gets doubled up. It also offers pretty good wind resistance, most silk fabrics on the market are gauzy and lightweight like organza or silk twill but ours is a lot more substantial. The silk squares aren't very warm because the shape isn't conducive to fully covering your neck and they're not bagged out, but as you said long scarf I figure you're looking at the bagged out scarves.

I don't know where you live or what the climate is like, I have to get up very early in the morning quite often and hang around overground stations in 0 - -5 and they are great for those kind of conditions. They aren't as warm as a thick wool scarf though, which is nice in my opinion as they fill that period in the year where your neck is cold but it's still too warm for a wool scarf, which is almost all of the year in the UK (and they don't itch).

[oucho]

Check out our new lookbook!

[Cowboy]

Anyone own the Absinthe T shirt/Stoic Cotton Drill Shirt and want to comment on the sizing?

Worried an L could be too small. 6'2 180 for reference.

[DeafIdiotGod]

Got one of the last of the Meadow shirts before the Notre Jardin collection went offline for good, absolute beauty. Nice and thick fabric, the giant print looks great and there are loads of fun little details all over the piece, see the attached album for pics.

It's a big hit with my textile student housemates.

[oucho]

Hello everyone we've released our new collection. It's called Pierscapes and features photographs of the sea and sky shot from Hastings pier as well as fish and shell prints. It all stems from the fact that mum moved to St Leonards (small town next to Hastings) a few years ago, Hastings has a really great pier and we ended up photographing the sea and sky from it and printing it on to fabric, then things got a bit out of hand and we started printing fish everywhere. The entire collection is made by mum in St Leonards, except for the silk squares which are made in a factory in London. Our fabric is all printed in the UK, the fabric is made in China and our printer won't tell us anymore than that as they are scared of competitors finding their source but they assure us that they have visited the factory and there is nothing suspect going on, we trust them.

For the last two years I've been training as a garden designer and I'm now working as a gardener, mum is also a keen gardener so we threw some gardening gear into the mix this year, as well as some smocks inspired by those worn by Hastings fishermen. We've got waterproof breathable fabrics, padded waterproof kneepads (kneepads on the cotton trousers are also waterproof), secateur pockets, adjustable cuffs and, most importantly, waterproof shorts.

Super importantly we've decided to move online only and sell exclusively through our own website. A lot of our pieces are quite complex to make involving a lot of print placement, embroidery and suchlike things which means they are expensive to make and will always be expensive to make. The nature of clothes that we are making also means that we are never going to sell 500 of something because there just isn't that big of a market for secateur pockets with eels on them. Stores want to charge 2.7 markup which means if we make something for £50 and sell it to a store for £100 they will then sell it to you for £270. It sucks because it means every small detail we add results in an ungodly increase in price, by being online only we can do things like have our YKK zips custom made, source vintage buttons and add pockets. At the end of the day we just don't want to make really expensive clothes, that's not fun for us. The end result is that we've actually decreased our prices this season (when was the last time you heard a fashion brand say that)

You can see the lookbook here

[sknss]

Lovely collection and excellent news about the pricing!

[tttigre]

wonderful stuff this go-round, really enjoy the development of including smocks and stuff. lately I've become really enamored by the british heritage brands such as carrier, old town and tender, and the pieces in this collection scratch that same itch. perhaps making some room in the future budget for a thing or two.

and, should anyone ever decide to give up a garden shirt...

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

Really nice! I really can't get down with silk but I really like the look and feel of this all it feels really lovely.

Markups and margins are a good reason not to get into wholesale - I often thought the same but as time has gone on I've started to understand their place a bit more.

[kickingthefly]

next collection needs delawarr pavilion