The atelier

Scarcity is not a strategy here. It is arithmetic.

We are not withholding. We are simply slow, and there are only so many hours in a bench.

Most houses decide how many to make. We find out.

Limited editions are usually a decision taken in a meeting. Ours is a consequence of the stitch: a hand seam takes roughly eight times as long as a machine seam, and no amount of ambition changes that.

Working days a year240
Benches3
Days on one pair, cutting to number11
Leather work, which comes first−45%
Pairs of No. 002 a year60

01

From hide to number

i

The hide is chosen

Whole hides, vegetable-tanned. We cut from the back, where the fibre is tightest, and accept that the belly is waste. A hide has scars, brands and bites; we cut around what we must and keep what tells the truth.

Day 1
ii

The cloth is cut loomstate

Unwashed, unsanforised, straight off the shuttle loom with its self-finished edge intact. The outseam is built on the selvedge, which is the only reason to pay for it.

Day 2
iii

The seams are pricked and pierced

Marked at six stitches to the inch, then opened with a diamond awl at a constant angle, by hand, before a needle touches anything. This is the step that takes years to learn and minutes to ruin.

Days 3–6
iv

It is stitched, and riveted

Two needles, one waxed linen thread. Copper rivets set by hand at every point of strain — the pockets, the fly, the base of the placket. The rivet is the saddler's contribution and we set it like one.

Days 7–10
v

The patch is struck and the number entered

The rear patch is cut from the same hide as the belts, struck with the crest and the number, and sewn on. The number goes into the register against your name, in ink, and stays there whether or not you ever come back.

Day 11

02

The workshop

Plate i

The bench. Awls, pricking irons, the clam. Available light, no styling.

Plate ii

Hands mid-stitch, two needles in frame. The most important photograph on the site.

Plate iii

The register itself — the open book, a number, a name.

We would rather show you the bench than a model. Anyone can buy a photograph of a good-looking person in denim; nobody can buy a photograph of a seam they did not sew.

If you are serious about it, write to us and come and see it. We would rather you handled the leather before you paid for it.

Sixty pairs, and a book with names in it

If that is how you would like to buy a pair of jeans, the register is open.

Join the register