Fashion Revolution Week, "Who Made Your Clothes?"
We’re just coming to the end of Fashion Revolution week; a charitable fashion movement encouraging consumers to be more curious and ask, “who made my clothes?”
Sometimes in this culture of over consumption and mass production, it can be very easy to forget that nearly all clothing, and certainly all lingerie, is handmade by a human being. There is no magic machine that 3D prints the perfect bra (at least not yet!) There is no machine that loads itself with the next garment or sews a perfect stitch without a skilled seamstress/seamster at the helm. This is skilled work, which is all too often not paid as such.
Its so important to me that Pip & Pantalaimon is totally transparent in its manufacturing. Not only do we have nothing to hide, I actually think we’re doing something kind of cool and worth shouting about! We’re making EVERYTHING in the UK. Until the beginning of 2018 we were actually making every single piece in house, within the same four walls as we answered emails, pack up orders, pattern cut and ordered supplies. I constantly read blog posts about why that’s not sustainable and isn’t a good way of doing business. But actually, for us, it really worked. We were making every single piece to order, we didn’t carry any stock at all. Which meant no excess stock, which is extremely wasteful and hard on the environment, but that’s another blog post.
Now, I feel like we’re so so so lucky to have such amazing customers who support us, shop with us, share our stuff and email us just to let us know they like our brand and want us to keep up the good work. That’s really cool to hear, but it’s also lead to more orders and we can no longer keep up while making house. So earlier this year we outsourced! I’ve previously travelling to some major garment manufacturing countries of the world; Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. So where did we decide to outsource, to The UK of course! Most of our customers are based in the UK, so it seems like a no brainer to keep production here. There are some seriously skilled people out there, without as much call for their work as they deserve, their work is brilliant, and they enjoy what they do. They all work from their home/ private studios, dictating their own working style. So, for the foreseeable future, we’ll be working with them to keep making our super strong, empowering retro/vintage lingerie for all you lovely lot!
We have absolutely nothing to hide, we pay a fair wage, we’re realistic with our expectations, we aren’t trying the squeeze anyone for more, all the while, selling you guys lingerie at an affordable price. It may not be the cheapest you can buy, and its never going to be, but our pricing is competitive, and we can boast the added element of being 100% made in England, unlike the majority of similar brands.