Our Story
Twenty years on, and the plan finally caught up. The care never needed to.
How we do this responsibly, in the studio and down the supply chain Sustainability & Ethics →
Nailya spent five years doing pattern cutting and sampling for high street suppliers, work that taught her exactly how a garment needs to hold up, not just look right for a moment. When maternity leave gave her a pause, a student reached out asking for help with a project. She said yes, mostly because it let her keep doing work she loved while still being present as a new mother. What started in a back room had no real plan behind it beyond that single instinct: don’t lose the craft. For years, that instinct was the entire business plan. There wasn’t a proper one.
That’s a lovely way to start something. It’s also, honestly, the difficult part. Passion can carry a business a long way on its own, but it can’t tell you where it’s actually going. For years, this one ran purely on love for the craft, no structure behind it, no real path for what it might become. Loving the work is fantastic. It isn’t the same as knowing where that love is going to take you, and that distinction took a lot longer to learn than the sewing did.
The work outgrew the back room within about a year. The first proper studio opened in Fulham, with a friend helping make the leap happen. Nailya’s son grew up around that studio, quite literally, spending time on the cutting table while she worked on evening gowns and bridal pieces nearby.
From Fulham, the business moved a few more times before landing in its current North West London premises, built the way a studio should be from the ground up: proper cutting tables, real lighting, space that doesn’t rush anyone.
Because the business grew this way, without a plan, purely because Nailya wouldn’t let go of the craft, the people who found it and stayed were the ones who matched that spirit. The studio today is twenty people strong, and there’s a real thread running through why most of them are still here. Part of that is a profit-sharing scheme every team member takes part in, more on how that works on our Sustainability page →
Meet the Team
Not everyone on the team works directly with clients. These are the ones who do.
Founder
Nailya founded the studio and still works the cutting table most days, twenty years in and the part of the job she never wanted to give up. She's also the one who answers first when a new enquiry comes in, so if this is your first conversation with us, it's probably with her.
General Management and Client Relationships
Daria arrived here sideways, with a background in teaching rather than garment manufacturing, and somehow found her place anyway. She's office manager by day, and by her own admission, something of a troublemaker with a bubbly personality once the day winds down. In between, she's the one actually managing your project and keeping you properly looked after.
Technical Direction
Svetlana has never shied away from responsibility, and it shows in how she runs the technical side of every garment. Strict but fair is how the team describes her, exactly the kind of oversight that catches a construction problem before it becomes an expensive one.
Client Relations
Maxim works directly with clients throughout a project, another familiar face alongside Daria's for anything that needs a proper answer.
Cutting Room Manager
Gergana runs the cutting room and works directly with clients too, often the person walking you through the details in person when you visit for quality control.
Finishing
Tanya handles the finishing work on every garment, and is sometimes in the room with clients during quality control, the last set of eyes on a piece before it's considered done.
We’re growing. See our current vacancies.
Today, this is a proper business. There’s a plan, real structure, shareholders, an actual path for where it’s going next, everything that was genuinely missing in the early years. But the core of it hasn’t moved. This is still a team that enjoys the work, and we believe that shows up in what gets made here. The studio has built pieces for Vivienne Westwood’s bridal line and for Erdem, with work that’s appeared on catwalks in London, Paris and Milan, and been worn by First Ladies of the UK and the US. We think there’s a mark that garments carry when they’re made by people who genuinely enjoy the work, rather than just producing it, and that mark is part of why our clients succeed. That’s not a line we plaster across the website for effect. It’s the actual reason this page exists.
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