One sweatshirt.Made the long way.
Our twelfth collection, and the twelfth time we have made exactly one thing. Aegean long-staple cotton, spun and looped on shuttle frames in Anatolia, cut and closed by nine pairs of hands in one atelier. We make a single model — ninety a month, each one numbered — and when the month's run is spoken for, we stop until the next.
4 of 90 sold in September; 86 left this month
- Weight
- 480
- Grams per square metre, loopback fleece
- Monthly run
- 90
- Pieces a month — each one numbered
- Daily output
- 3
- Garments finished per day — the atelier's whole capacity
- Workshop
- 1
- Atelier, nine people, Denizli
- 1Kilim band, inside collar
- 2Hand-linked rib
- 3Chainstitched side seams
- 4Series tape, left seam
Model 012 — the Warp Crew
A boxy crewneck in undyed and madder-dyed fleece. Heavy enough to hold its shape off the shoulder, soft enough on the inside to wear against skin from the first hour.
- Fibre
- Long-staple Aegean cotton, Söke valley, rain-fed
- Knit
- 480 gsm loopback fleece, slow-run on 1970s shuttle frames
- Colour
- Undyed ecru or madder root — both dyed in copper vats, no pigment
- Detail
- Kilim-derived neck taping, woven on a hand loom in Gaziantep
- Sizes
- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 — boxy, one length
The Process
Cotton grown for length, not yield
Rain-fed long-staple cotton from the Söke valley, hand-graded before spinning. Longer fibres mean fewer ends at the surface, so the fleece stays smooth instead of pilling into fuzz by the second winter.
Knitted at a third of the speed
480 gsm loopback fleece run on 1970s shuttle frames at low tension. Slow knitting lets the yarn keep its loft and its memory — the cloth relaxes on the body and then returns.
Colour from root and shell
Madder root and walnut husk in copper vats, fixed without heavy metals. The tone shifts perhaps two shades over years of washing, the way old kilims do. No pigment print, no optical brightener.
Anatolian taping, hand loomed
The neck is taped with a narrow kilim band woven in Gaziantep on a hand loom, in a motif drawn from a nineteenth-century Kurdish saddlebag. It is inside the collar, where only the wearer sees it.
Three garments a day, then the lights go off
Chainstitched side seams and hand-linked rib on a Union Special. The atelier finishes three sweatshirts a day — its whole capacity. 90 pieces a month, each numbered on the placket tape, and then the month's run closes.
“The loom runs at a third of the speed it could. That is the whole secret, and it is not a secret.”