Silence as a design principle

A loud garment tells you what to think about the person wearing it before they have said anything. It arrives first. It answers a question nobody asked.

Silence is not the absence of a statement. It is the refusal to make the statement on someone else’s behalf.

What it looks like in the cutting

No logo. Nothing on the outside of a piece names the house that made it — the only place our name appears is where the law requires it.

Colour lives on the cloth and nowhere else. The photographs on this site are monochrome until you reach for them, and that is not a filter: it is the same rule applied to the pictures that is applied to the clothes.

Structure instead of decoration. The tulle in MMXIX has no interfacing, because the structure is meant to be the fabric rather than something hidden underneath it holding the shape up. That is harder to cut and it is the point.

And an exposed gold zipper at the back of the MMXXIII toile, which is not an accident. It is a question. The one loud thing, placed deliberately, where a person has to decide whether to show it.

What it costs

Recognisability. A logo does work that we have chosen not to do. Somebody across a room will not know what you are wearing, and that is the trade.

The world drowns in noise. Everyone wants to speak. This is an attempt at the other thing.

Only what is true can ever be beautiful.

— Elisabeth Nehls