The Story
Emil
Short for Emilia, she has always gone by Emil. A ghostwriter - which is to say her best sentences appear under other people's names. She finds her material in overheard conversations in languages she only half speaks, translating stories out of gesture and tone. Sharp attitude softened by silk.
The Clothes
Every piece is named for the work: The Writer, The Manuscript, The Letter, The Studio. It isn't decoration. It's a reminder of what the clothes are for - a life with something in it besides the clothes.
Colours repeat rather than rotate: alabaster, silver blue, lavender blue, sienna pink, briar wood, burnt rose. A shirt bought now should sit beside one bought two years from now and look as though they were always meant to.
Chapters, not seasons
We release in chapters. Not because we dislike the word season, but because a chapter implies the one before it still counts. Chapter One is twenty pieces. It stays open - pieces are remade rather than discontinued.
The Making
For twenty years we made other people's clothes. Our silk house in Nanjing has been weaving and cutting since 2003, mostly for labels we are not permitted to name. OF EMIL is the first thing we have put our own name to.
Everything is cut from silk we produce ourselves — 19mm and 22mm satin, silk cotton rib, 35mm spun silk linen — from the house's own farms, certified to OEKO-TEX® Standard 100. Creative direction comes from Los Angeles, the business is run from the UK, and the making happens where it has always happened.
Emil is not real. The silk is.
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