Keeping it going

Everything here is cotton, which means it is all machine washable and all mendable. Most of what shortens a garment's life happens in the machine, and most of what ends it is one seam we would happily sew back up.

Clothes that get better the more you wash them

One Harbour Shirt in chalk, belonging to one of the machinists in Nottingham, photographed three times. Nothing has been done to it except wearing it and washing it.

Out of the bagTwice-washed poplin, already soft, and about as white as it will ever be. The collar stands up on its own for roughly a fortnight.

One year inAround fifty washes. The cloth has given a little at the elbows and across the back, the collar has stopped standing up, and the chalk has gone half a shade warmer.

Three years inThe bit worth buying it for. Long-staple cotton thins evenly rather than in patches, so it drapes instead of hanging. A faint cream at the collar and cuffs that no amount of washing takes out, and should not.

Five things that matter in the machine

Cool and full: Thirty degrees does everything forty does. A full drum is gentler than a half-empty one, where the load has room to beat itself against the sides.
Tumble low, or do not: Everything woven can go in on low. The knitwear cannot: cotton knits stretch under their own weight when wet, so lay them flat and turn them once.
Nothing with bleach in it: Including the colour-safe kind, which is bleach. It works on the cotton as well as on the stain and thins the cloth from the inside.
Iron the poplin damp: Straight out of the machine, hot, and it takes about a minute. Bone dry it takes five and never comes out as flat.
Fold the knitwear: A hanger puts the whole weight of a wet-heavy cotton jumper on two points of the shoulder, and it stays there.

Send it back and we will mend it

The nineteen people who made it are still there and they have the cloth. A seam, a hem, a cuff or a button is free for as long as you own the garment, whoever owned it before you and whether or not you have the receipt. Anything bigger gets quoted before we touch it.

Seam, hem or cuff: Free, for as long as you own it
Buttons, all of them: Free
Darning a hole: From £12, quoted first
Taking trousers up: £8
Replacing a collar: From £25, quoted first

Turnaround is about two weeks, longer in January when everybody has the same idea. Postage to Nottingham is on you, postage back is on us.

Tell us what has gone

Say what it is and what has happened to it. Somebody in the machine room will read it and write back with a yes, a price or a question, usually the same day.

Something that arrived faulty or does not fit is a different thing and does not need any of this.

Delivery and returns