Design principles

We hold that making something well is an act of restraint, and restraint is the discipline this house practises hardest. Considered making means answering the uncomfortable questions of the decade instead of the convenient ones. The fibres we commit to this year decide what the next generation inherits, and a garment carries a set of values as plainly as it carries a season. Our responsibility is to be certain that what we put into the world has earned its place in a fairer and far less wasteful wardrobe. We would rather ask the difficult question in public than answer an easy one in private.

These principles are the standard every collection is held to, and the measure we reach for whenever a decision is genuinely difficult. Setting them down in public commits us to the pace we work at, the partners we keep, and the account we are willing to give of both, this season and every one after it.

Make things that outlast us

Design pieces that hold their shape, their colour and their appeal for a decade, and decide at the outset what should happen to them at the end of it.

Choose material with care

Favour fibres and finishes that ask less of the land, the water and those who grow them.

Keep pace with our partners

Hold long relationships with the mills and makers who work to the standard we set.

Say only what we can show

Publish the part of the supply chain we can verify, name the part we cannot yet reach, and correct the record ourselves when we get something wrong.

Leave the place in better order

Return more to the districts we work in than the work itself takes out of them.