A Conversation with Our Pattern Maker

Before a single yard of fabric is cut, every silhouette in our collection passes through the hands of one person: a pattern maker who has spent three decades turning sketches into something a body can actually wear.

On Starting Over

"The first draft is never the one that ships," she tells us, unrolling a length of dotted pattern paper across the table. "You make the sleeve, you pin it to the muslin, you watch someone move in it—reach for something on a shelf, sit down, turn around—and half the time you go back to the beginning."

A pattern isn't finished until it disappears. You shouldn't feel it at all.

The Forty-Try Rule

It's not an official number, she admits, more a running joke in the studio. But it isn't far off. Between the first flat sketch and the version that becomes a house pattern, there are dozens of small adjustments—an eighth of an inch here, a dart moved a centimeter there—each one invisible on its own, and unmistakable together.

"People think patternmaking is about the shape," she says. "It's really about the pause before someone notices anything is well-made at all."