We produce in Portugal, using organic cotton, Italian cotton piqué, and heritage loopback jersey, garment dyed for a soft, sun-drenched colour. Portugal has manufactured textiles for generations, concentrated around the Ave Valley in the north, and the mills we work with hold GOTS and OEKO-TEX certification, meaning the organic claim is auditable at every stage, from fibre to finished garment.

Dyeing is the most water-intensive stage of making any garment. Industry estimates put textile dyeing and finishing behind somewhere between 17 and 20% of all industrial water pollution globally. The mills we use run closed-loop systems that filter and reuse dye water rather than discharging it, cutting consumption dramatically against a conventional dye bath. 

Garment dyeing, and where the softness comes from

Garment dyeing is different from dyeing the fabric or the yarn before the garment is cut and sewn. The piece is made first, in its raw, undyed state, and only coloured once it's a finished dress, skort, top or sweatshirt. The technique traces back to piece-dyeing, first developed in Lyon in 1849, but garment dyeing as its own industrial process is younger and more specific: it was developed in Italy in the early 1970s by the designer Massimo Osti, who found that dyeing a finished garment, rather than the fabric that made it, produced colour that landed unevenly across different stitches, seams, and textures. That unevenness is the point. The garments feel lived in. No two garments take the dye bath identically, so no two pieces come out quite the same colour.

It also changes the hand of the fabric. Because the garment goes through a wash cycle as part of the dyeing itself, it comes out pre-softened, with much of the shrinkage already done. That's where the sun-drenched, slightly faded colour and the soft, broken-in feel of our pieces comes from: not a finishing treatment applied afterward, but the dyeing process itself.