We feel good wearing authentic, great fitting, comfortable clothes.
“symbolic meaning” translates:
Nostalgic clothes… bottom drawer filled with old t-shirts.
Occupational uniforms… work clothes that showcase position/purpose.
Personal uniforms… styles you love because they look and feel good.
Whether it's tied to nostalgia, aspiration, or introspection the clothes we wear have a profound impact on our wellbeing.
The impact of our clothes on our well-being and success can be especially true in our professional lives. This is because, if you're like us, you spend the majority of the day working, cycling between zoom calls, getting blindsided by fire drills, or stressing over an afternoon presentation. It all adds up, and it's exhausting.
Feeling creative, proactive, and happy throughout the day depends on tons of things, including how comfortable and confident we feel about what we're wearing.
Finding styles you love, upgrading them to last for life, and then repeating is our simple formula. Repeating styles, AKA your "personal uniform", opens up more time for creativity, productivity, and recharging... also it's great for the planet.
Just by wearing our clothes for 9 months longer, our individual carbon footprint can be reduced by 30%, which is equivalent to removing half a million cars off the road per person per year.
We work with the soft underbelly fibers that insulate yak in cold -40° F winters. This fiber is called khullu ("coo-loo"), and it’s some of the best natural fiber money can buy. Not only is khullu warmer and more breathable than lambswool and cashmere, but the fiber is also world-renowned for its antimicrobial properties, meaning it doesn't trap odor like cotton and synthetic materials. Khullu fiber averages 15-20 μm in fineness, which is about 80% finer than human hair.
In Tibetan culture, many pieces of clothing are handmade from khullu and must last for many seasons. Some pieces of clothing are even passed down from generation to generation. Khullu is a super material that not only thermoregulates and fights odor like few other materials but also is extremely durable and meant to last for a lifetime.
Our sweaters are created with a technology called Wholegarment, which allows us to knit in 3-dimensions.
Traditionally, sweaters are created by sewing cut fabric parts together that are each knit separately. This causes waste and irritating seams that interfere with stretch and fit.
Our process, on the other hand, knits sweaters in one entire piece, creating a more comfortable fit with nearly zero waste.
Our sweaters are made in Brooklyn, New York by Tailored Industry. We work with them to create our sweaters through a new manufacturing process called Wholegarment 3D knitting.
When we were initially designing our sweater, we looked for ways to create a more comfortable fit and reduce waste. Wholegarment manufacturing checked those boxes - instead of sewing cut fabric parts together that are each knit separately, the Wholegarment process knits sweaters in one entire piece without seams, creating a more durable sweater with nearly zero waste.
We chose Tailored Industry vs. other Wholegarment manufacturers in part because of their brand vision. They want to become a platform for on-demand knitwear. We're hoping we can grow together, create all kinds of custom sizes, and eventually remove the need for inventory completely. We'll see!
Yes. Machine wash at normal or cool temperature. Don't tumble dry. Instead, hang dry out of direct sunlight. Avoid fabric softener or products with bleach. should pilling occur, throw your sweater in the wash with a pair of jeans, just make sure to close the zippers. Over time, the shorter fibers causing the pilling will pull away on their own.
Buy a sweater and we'll tell you.
There's only so much we can do alone, and we quickly realized that the clothes/styles/things that make us feel good are deeply personal. We're creating a sweater meant to be central to a personal uniform and last for life. We had to make sure we were creating something people really wanted to not only wear, but wear repeatedly, which is why for the past several months we’ve been co-creating our sweater with our community called the Customer Advisory Board.
What exactly does the advisory board do?
We send members things in the mail like measuring tapes, yarn and sweater samples, and even sweaters so they can tell us about their perfect fit and put our sweaters to the test. We also jump on Zoom calls with members because, well... faceless brands suck.
At the end of the day, we're learning about what helps our customers feel their best. Instead of us designing alone, we're excited to co-create our first product together through the Customer Advisory Board. Who knows, maybe our 1st advisory board members will even stick around to help us design our 10th product. We hope so.
