Slow fashion bespoke label Couture To Your Door has a no-polyester policy

Shopping for fashion can be a harrowing experience - online or in-store - from wrong sizes and uncomfortable materials to clothes that are just very blah and soulless. No wonder then that bespoke fashion that is made-to-measure is gaining in popularity.

British label Couture To Your Door (CTYD) promotes slow fashion practices while making the world of luxury accessible to everyone with a timeless and elegant collection that is personalised and environmentally friendly. FashionUnited spoke with CTYD-founder and designer Maria Loria via email about the appeal of well-designed clothes that are customisable and made to last a lifetime. 

How did the idea of Couture To Your Door come about?

I suspected that there was a gap in the market for a designer to lead the way towards wearable upcycled high fashion that was environmentally kinder, designed well and that was made transparently by someone who deeply cared about human rights, biodiversity, and the climate. 

Over the past two years, I’d also witnessed firsthand through my rental brand the challenges that people were facing finding fashion that was well tailored and that fitted them to their exact aesthetic and body shape. Customers would try on a rental dress they loved but that they knew the neckline didn’t suit them, or a beautiful statement coat they loved but that the length was too long or they wished the print had more of a darker palette to suit their skin tone. 

I’d also had direct experience seeking pre-loved fashion from mid-market and high fashion brands and the clothes not fitting me due to my odd waist-to-hip ratio. I knew that if I was experiencing these issues that many other people must be too. 

Is Couture To Your Door a counter balance to mass production?

With the shift towards e-commerce and re-commence, I was concerned that the gap between ordering online and finding something that fitted was widening. This to me translated into a future filled with more mass-production disappointment, more packaging, more journeys, more returns, and more waste multiplied by infinity! I was seeing a shift towards fashion becoming a commodity market for both fast fashion, marketplaces and the luxury conglomerates and it made me quite sad. 

The middle market garments were also beginning to look generic to me, yet the recommended retail prices were in the hundreds of pounds. Most items at the top, middle and bottom of the market when I checked the brand labels were still being made from 100 percent polyester or some form of synthetic textile or newly produced virgin material. The lines between fast fashion, mid-market and ready-to-wear luxury looked blurred with the only real differentiator being where the garment was made.

With such an inordinate amount of vintage cotton, jacquard and unwanted synthetic textiles already in existence, I questioned why the mid-market and luxury brands were not further ahead with a robust ready-to-wear upcycling, made-to-measure and made-to-order service and why they were not repurposing existing textiles? With their wealth and resources, why were they still using new cotton and recycled polyester when there was more than enough already in existence that could be repurposed without the harsh and energy-draining process of recycling?

It was at this point that I decided to create CTYD. A semi pret-a-porter type operating model geared towards getting it right the first time, with the belief that if the customer could get something that is to their exact requirement and fit that they would wear the item over and over and eventually turn their backs on commodity fashion. 

You are also the founder of rental service WearMyWardrobeOut - how do the two platforms complement each other? Is there a crossover in terms of clients?  

Yes indeed, lots of crossover. The rental platform was initially a service for people to hire statement outfits sourced only from textiles already in circulation which I’d repaired and refashioned for rewear and for rental. I was seeing lots of customers wanting to rent a one-of-a-kind garment but it being marginally too big or small for them. So, I’d offer to temporarily tailor their rental so they could wear it for their event because they wanted to wear something totally unique to them. 

I then started to receive fabric donations from repeat rental customers, a mix of vintage, dated curtains and textile pieces, so I began creating upcycled garments in a sample size to list on WearMyWardrobeOut that could be rented out. I’d make these in a size 10-12 because I thought that if they didn’t rent, that I could still wear them myself and they wouldn’t go to waste. Customers then started asking me to make them a bespoke made-to-measure in one of my upcycled designs but in a different print. This led me to create a made-to-order collection on the rental platform. But it was clunky and confusing for people, and they couldn’t self-serve or have the freedom to shop in their familiar online click-through method. 

So I created a new platform to enable the end-to-end customisation on CTYD that could be accessed globally by everyone. With the overarching mission being circular and zero waste fashion, whether that’s through renting off the peg, having your existing garments refashioned through alterations or ordering a high fashion, made-to-measure upcycled garment, I wanted to be the person to merge upcycled high fashion with online circular services.

CTYD is slow fashion with a fast turnaround time, garments are cut and made in the UK within seven days and dispatched the next working day - could you elaborate how the process works? How do you manage to deliver so fast?  

I’ve purposely steered away from creating trend designs or gimmick designs so that the collection on CTYD is optimised for statement designs using less pattern pieces and less complexity. This not only makes the garments more wearable, but it also makes it easier to deconstruct and refashion later in life. The designs I have created are unified in a way that they have been designed to conceal and take into consideration the areas that my rental and alteration customers have voiced as problematic to wear.

The seven-day turnaround is enabled because it’s based on engineering a good design from the onset. Many items that get returned from retailers and sent to landfill or sold on  reseller sites/retailers are due to the initial designs being fundamentally flawed, or the wrong textile being selected for production or a fussy or trendy finish that doesn’t suit a lot of people or certain body shapes.

Having a well-designed set of pattern pieces cut in a base size UK 6 to 18 enables me to adapt two to three measurements with ease for the end customer. Swapping necklines, sleeves, adapting lengths and base components between pattern pieces and designs is just a smarter way of working as a designer. Adding less fussy finishes such as optional lining, bespoke sized bows and raw edge hems gives a natural authenticity to each design without the fuss and unnecessary complexity.

The time investment has already occurred at the design phase which means that the seven-day turnaround allows me to adapt a base pattern, cut the textile and sew the garment without overengineering the process. I’m lucky to be a self-taught designer and be able to do the end-to-end process myself, this makes me more agile and less dependent on a third party supply chain or having unnecessary complexity in the supply chain. I handpick all textiles myself, clean them and repair them on the basis that I know which textiles will work with each design.

I don’t plan to have hundreds of designs or to follow the ‘seasons’. CTYD as it evolves will incorporate a ‘Revolving Fashion’ service which allows ustomers to swap out parts of their garment over its life cycle. This will eventually mean less textile waste, less expense for customers and creating an all-season capsule wardrobe that lets them swap yokes, sleeves, collars, bows and more to keep reinventing a base design over and over. The total cost of ownership is lower using this design approach versus buying 20 things a year and a mid-price point every year.

When CTYD reaches scale up, my mum and my niece will support busy periods. We are a family of self-taught creators.

What has been the reception so far, what are some of the favourite designs?

The reception and support has been incredible, with the plunge neck, full skirt and bow finish dresses being the most popular. The feedback is that the designs look very editorial and when worn, make people feel amazing due to the fit, the cut and the structured fabric. 

People have been surprised to find out that they can use their own fabric too for any CTYD design, removing even more barriers for a customer to have access to exactly what they want to wear. Lots of people already have textiles, cotton sheets, gorgeous but obsolete curtains, and vintage fabrics they have sat at home or have found in thrift shops that they’ve chosen themselves but not found a way of getting something made to wear and accessed online until now.

Where do you find your fabrics?

It’s a complete mix of donations from people through word of mouth and from scrap stores with the majority being handpicked by me from thrift markets, consumer second seller sites and from vintage markets. All are sourced from the UK.  

And a related question, what are the options if none of the vintage prints suits a customer; can they suggest a print/material?

Customers can provide their own material and have this delivered straight to our atelier. Not everyone wants an outlandish floral print or an upholstered jacquard coat. I appreciate that everyone has their own aesthetic. I also want to encourage people to repurpose textiles they already have for upcycling. Customers can select to do this online themselves by selecting ‘I’d like to provide my own material’ at checkout. When customers choose to provide their own material, I do have some non-negotiables such as, I do not accept any new 100 percent polyester under any circumstance and ask customers not to send any other new synthetic material. 

CTYD garments are designed in mind for vintage cotton, linen, organic textiles, vintage polycotton and jacquard textiles. I advise customers that they will need at least 3.5 yards of material for dresses and gowns. Once they’ve placed a design order, I contact the customer to confirm the exact size of material needed for the design they’ve chosen. The 3.5 yards gives the customer a guide for pricing if they are buying organic from a retailer or second hand before they purchase the material. Then we provide the exact size needed and 0.5 extra so that they don’t overpurchase.

What is planned next for CTYD, any exciting future events or designs?

The next phase would be to incorporate an AI Measurement App which enables customers to take two snaps with their smartphone which would provide up to 20 virtual measurements, removing the need to manually measure yourself. 

Over the next eight weeks, I will be uploading the final collection to the platform to complete the capsule collection and while CTYD builds a customer base, I will be listing a small ‘Off the Peg’ avantgarde collection. This will be one-of-a-kind runway garments that I’ve hand-upcycled for sale. The dream would be to do a LFW collaboration with a like-minded circular partner brand.   

In your opinion, will slow fashion prevail, maybe even drive out fast fashion and more commercial approaches?

Eventually, cheap fashion will become so unwearable that people will seek out a better and more unique fashion experience over a transactional one. People will become more alarmed and concerned about climate change as major climate events start to hit closer to home. This will urge people to reassess their consumption and slow down. Perhaps some will begin to feel betrayed by past greenwashing and climate negligence driven by some of their ‘once trusted’ go-to brands.  I think the traditional fashion designer trajectory and existing retail models will decline and re-commerce will become flooded with tech-driven marketplaces and apps. A commodity market of polyester, the resale of luxury ‘logo’ superbrands and synthetics making their way around a variety of different resale platforms. People will eventually get fatigued and look for richer and less transactional ways to consume fashion. One that is more fulfilling, transparent and that ultimately gives them authentic wearable fashion services that can be adapted to meet their ongoing needs. Fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M are already quietly creeping their way into the luxury space, promoting more collabs with couture household designer names and pledging investment into biodiversity initiatives with people like Kering. I think the ultra-fast fashion brands know their commercial approach of ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ is outdated and that the influencer culture is becoming repetitive and underwhelming to consumers.

As a conscious designer, throwaway fashion must be a particularly painful phenomenon to watch as every garment requires resources, energy, and creativity. If you could educate consumers, what is the one thing you would say? 

It baffles me how people can still be so unaware of the irreversible impacts their consumption habits are having on our planet. If I was going to educate consumers, I’d ask them to go onto YouTube and watch how polyester and synthetics fibres are produced, I’d even prompt them to look at how recycled polyester is produced. It’s only when people see this manmade intensive process for themselves that they’ll grasp just how harsh the process is at all stages to even produce one yarn for their clothing, and that’s even before the textile reaches the hands of a garment worker.