Why I don't call what we make fashion
I've never been comfortable calling what we do "fashion." Fashion moves. It changes with the season, chases trends, and asks you to keep up. What we make is the opposite of that, and I think it deserves its own name. I call it slow clothing.
The difference isn't just semantics. Fashion starts with a trend and works backwards. Slow clothing starts with a fabric and stays there.
For me, it always starts with the print. I design it, sit with it, sometimes for months, before it becomes anything. Once it does, the clothing is deliberately simple. Clean shapes, easy silhouettes, nothing that competes with the fabric. That's not a lack of ambition. It's the whole approach. A trend dates itself the moment the next one arrives. A good print, left to do its job without fuss, doesn't.
Slow clothing means fewer, better decisions, on both sides. I release two Essaye collections a year, not six or eight. I make things I know will hold up, not things designed to be replaced. And when you buy something from us, I want it to be a decision you don't have to make again next season.
It also means staying close to how things are made. About 90% of what we produce happens within 5km of our studio in Leichhardt. I know the people who cut and sew our clothing. I can walk over and check a production run, and often do. That's not possible at the speed fashion usually moves.
And it means some things simply run out. Theadora Jones is built entirely on this idea, small-batch fabrics I hand-select, made into limited pieces. Once they're gone, they're gone. No reorder, no "back in stock" email. That scarcity isn't a marketing trick. It's what happens when you make things slowly and honestly, rather than at a pace designed to keep shelves full.
I understand why "slow fashion" became the term everyone reaches for. But fashion, by definition, is built to move fast. I'd rather make clothing that doesn't need to.
