Names can carry personal, cultural, familial, and historical connections. They give us a sense of who we are, the community we belong to, and they help us find our place in the world. And it’s one more way our team pays homage to the makers whose hands create everything in our shop.
Our design process is long. Typically our team spends 6-9 months from that first initial idea for a product through production and finally when it’s ready to sell, sometimes that timeline can extend to a year or two for our more complicated pieces. We obsess over every detail: from the material it’s made of (including where it comes from and how we obtain it), to the finished look of the piece, and every loving stitch in between as we create them one-at-a-time just for you. The finishing touch is naming it, and we’d like to share with you how that happens.
As we iterate on a design, we have deep and meaningful conversations alongside our makers. They pour their heart and soul into the craft by weaving their tradition and culture into everything made by their hands. Sometimes designs have a story behind their creation and sometimes we give designs silly nicknames as we bring them to life. Once we feel confident to say, “This is perfect, our customers will love it,” we’re ready to name it. We think back to that design’s journey—what inspired it? What materials is it made of? What does it remind us of? How does it make us feel? We take a descriptive word, in the native language of the team who made it, then translate it to English—and that’s what we call that product to our customers. It’s that little extra something that gives a nod back to the village where it originated.
And speaking of our iterative design process, that means we end up with a lot (I mean seriously A LOT) of products that don’t ever get produced into full stocked pieces in new launches. We still buy these from our makers, we want them to be free to explore, experiment, create, and dream until we have a product that we’re all proud of, but we can’t hold on to each and every piece. That’s why we have our Sample Sales. These semi-annual events are held right on our website where we offer one-of-a-kind styles at big discounts. Many pieces have just a handful of quantity in stock, and some have just one available, but pieces always begin selling out within the first 30 minutes. Our next sale is planned for May and we’re going to have so many goodies for you to discover now that we’re working with a few new groups of makers. Can’t wait to share more details as it gets closer ❤️
Respecting Heritage + Tradition
