Most of what we make is never released. That is not a failure of the process; it is the process.
A piece begins as a drawing, becomes a first sample within a fortnight, and then goes quiet for a season. Somebody in the studio wears it. Not carefully, and not for photographs. They travel in it, pack it badly, wash it more than they should, and report back.
The wear test
The questions we ask afterwards are unglamorous. Where did it pull? What did the collar do after the third wash? Did the pocket sit where a hand actually goes, or where it looked correct on paper?
Roughly half of the samples fail here, and usually for small reasons. A seam that sits a centimetre too high. A weight of fabric that reads beautifully on the roll and heavily on a shoulder. These are not disasters, but they are enough.
Revision, then revision again
What survives comes back to the table for a second pattern, occasionally a third. By the time a piece reaches the line it has typically been rebuilt twice and simplified once, because the last revision is almost always a subtraction.
It is a slower way to build a house. It also means that when something does arrive, we already know how it behaves after a year, because somebody here has had one for a year.
