Brown buttons in a pile
Small Pile of Brown Horn Material Buttons

GENUINE QUALITY

It isn’t that hard to make one thing well, often simple perseverance will get you there. To make many things well is infinitely more difficult. Making garments is about a lot of things, but at its heart, it is about the pattern. When things are in production something usually goes wrong, but it can also almost always be fixed. If you start with a bad pattern there is no way to recover. That is why it often takes us a year of revisions before we put a pattern into production. We are confident in our abilities and we are patient - good takes time. our role model is an acorn.

Materials:
Some of our cotton materials are made using organic cotton (Control Union (SKAL) 100% GOTS Certified) and are grown without herbicides and are free of chemical fertilizers & pesticides.

Dyeing:
Our solids are dyed with reactive dyes. This is done domestically (There are vast differences in the environmental laws between Asia & the United States – here in the U.S. many of the traditional leads and binders used in dyes from years past have recently been regulated out. The result is that fabrics dyed in certain foreign countries might have more permanence of color, but also higher levels of toxicity. This is why many of our (domestically dyed) solids are over-dyed to an initially brighter shade than we would otherwise do. After a few washes, the color settles down and over time they end up nicely patinated. After the dyeing process, we frame and heat press the fabric and then re-roll to eliminate the wrinkles and grain distortion that naturally occurred during the dying process, so that the material is smooth for accurate cutting. Some of our products are dyed using verified (OEKO-TEX standard 100 certified) eco-friendly and sustainable process for dyeing and finishing.

Printing:
Our domestic patterns are screen printed instead of digitally printed. At this time, we have not found a digital fabric printer in the United States (they do exist in Europe & elsewhere) that has the machinery capable of the digital quality we require. The printing of our imported pattern we can not speak about the technical aspects of that, but the factories in Paris and Milan where the printing takes place are some of the most respected fabric printers in the world. If given a choice between screen print and digital printing (where art allows) we always choose screen (the dye saturated the fabric deeper and more thoroughly, but screen prints are quickly becoming hard to find. Also, with digital printing, there are artistic opportunities that are not possible with screen printing.

Cutting:
We use both: precision multi-ply vacuum conveyorized cutting systems and hand-operated electric straight knife machines. For engineered prints, we nail the stack. All bundles are color matched.

Sewing:
All of our garments are sewn in the Western or Southeastern United States. We use separate factories for each of our product categories (different machine requirements) and we also find that factories that specialize tend to do a better job. (i.e. For our “bottoms” we use different factories than our “tops”). Sewing is the heart of our product and the factories that we contract with treat their sewers fairly. They work long hours, but they are paid a fair wage and have clean working conditions. We tend to regionalize the sewing of our products. (i.e. the East is known to be stronger in the production of formal wear and the West better at casual wear.) Therefore, our shirts are sewn in North Carolina, which has a long history of quality and cotton. Our shorts are sewn in Los Angeles, where we have long standing relationships with factories. Our board short factory (Orange County) is the smallest of all the factories we use. Because of the lightweight nature of the material and the complexity of interlocking parts, boardshorts are very prone to be distorted by poor manufacturing. Because of this, instead of the typical assembly line manufacturing where many different people sew a piece up, we find (at a much higher production cost) that we ultimately create a better product if we only use two people (total) to sew up each short.

Finishing:
For the lighter color fabric, we launder them after sewing. On our shorts that are made from heavier materials (e.g. Duck & Twill) we sometimes silicone wash them for softness. Our Chamois shirts are enzyme washed for softness.

The Happiness Guarantee

We work very hard to make the best quality garments, but also understand that sometimes things don't turn out as you expect. If for any reason upon receiving your order, it is not what you expected and/or you do not consider it money well spent, simply return the product(s) in their original condition / timely manner for a full exchange/discount.