Blue in Green Capsule, Jackets, Sun Fading, ASICS, a Return to Patches, Natural Dyes, Shop

Hello from the February update.

Man, we are in a groove. I think future Story mfg collectors will look back at this period of the brand and say, this is where they found their pace. I’m not saying it’s a golden age – that implies less-than-golden ages – but given the climate, the year, the decade… I’m genuinely over the moon with how things are going.

We’re making things that are so beautiful, building on years and years of research, development and partnerships. Stuff is coming through so often now that, as an outsider, you probably don’t realise just how special some of it is. And try as I might, me constantly saying “look how fucking cool this is” doesn’t always get through.

A few highlights that have either just dropped or are coming very soon:

Blue in Green capsule

A small collection made for one of our stockists in New York. There’ll be more info on our socials and on their site, but it feels like a perfect midpoint between nature, craft and sustainable design. I did a little video on it – I’ll try to embed it below – but if you don’t follow @mfg_mfg_mfg_mfg_mfg_ on Instagram, you’re missing this and a lot more.

Jackets

So many jackets this season feel like, at the time of design, they would have been the culmination of years of work. Weaving, dyeing, knitting, embroidery. I need a human-centipede-style build to wear them all at once, but I’m considering it.

New capsules

We did a small “Thai” capsule last year (some images below) which was a big hit, so we’ve got another one planned. I saw samples last week and it’s going to be hard not to keep all the stock for myself.

Sun fading

The sun-fading project we run through R.T.S. has finally produced some really interesting indigo results. Our natural indigo is so strong it took longer than anything else. I think the dyers were a little disgusted with us, to be honest – they’ve spent 30 years perfecting a process that gives dye as much staying power as possible, and we’re out in the garden on our bullshit.

The results are magnificent. Using only the sun, where wash houses would normally use toxic chemicals or lasers.



ASICS

I get asked a lot about the ASICS collaborations. Timelines always move, but roughly speaking: we have something coming toward the end of this year, and more at the start or middle of next.

It’s such a dream to have an ongoing collaboration like this. It feels like a real cosign of trust. If you liked the last one, you’ll love the next two.

Both releases are well into design. We’re at the sampling stage, and I’m working on the shoots, possibly repeating the activation we did in London in other parts of the world. It was sweet.



A return to patches

(This is a long one.)

I’ve spoken about this before, but it matters to me.

We used to do patches, and one season we thought, “fuck it, let’s go all out.” The whole team got together to remake and reinterpret a bunch of vintage (mostly hiking) patches. In our usual Story mfg way, everything was done by hand, so the result was wobbly – in the best way.


When it came time to show some of the pieces, an artist we’d worked with in the past (in a totally different context – they drew art for a tee) called us out on Instagram, saying we’d ripped off his style. We hadn’t.

His issue was that, years earlier, we’d discussed potentially working together on embroidered patches as part of a wider project. We wanted to, but when his quote came in it was four times what we’d expected or budgeted for. We ended up just doing a tee instead of the larger collaboration.

When, a year or more later, we released garments with embroidered patches, he believed strongly that we’d stolen his work and posted about it publicly. The result was a pile-on: awful comments, people who already disliked the brand joining in.

We have never, ever stolen work. The patches he was taking credit for were the result of our own work, and the work of many others – especially makers in India. A lot of people.

I arranged a call with him. He was adamant we’d stolen from him. The options he gave us were:
1. Remove the work from Instagram and never sell it.
2. Sell it, but give him money and credit for work he had nothing to do with.
3. Pay him an enormous amount of money to “let it slide”.

I still don’t know what the “right” decision was. He wouldn’t accept any explanation. He wanted credit. In hindsight, the right move may have been to ignore it entirely. But at the time, Story mfg had never been “called out”, and I didn’t want to fight in comment sections.

I don’t want to make this about race, but I’m being honest: it made me sick to my stomach to pay a white guy in America for work made by me and our friends and partners, which he had no hand in.

This all happened while I was at the lowest point of my mental health. I was off work, barely able to get out of bed. My wonderful wife and incredibly understanding team went along with my decision to pull the items he claimed were inspired by him (they weren’t) and move on.

I wasn’t strong enough then to argue properly. But I would never, ever tell the world someone made work they knowingly did not. In his mind, because we’d once discussed embroidered patches and didn’t work together, we could never make them again – even though we had before.

We’ve not heard from him since, but we avoided this very Story mfg area out of fear of reigniting the situation.

I wish I’d told him plainly that we did nothing wrong, that he was misreading the situation, and moved on. I was scared because he was a “small artist” and we were a “big brand”, and I worried that narrative would make us look like the villains – despite working for over a decade with care, respect and integrity.

We are incredibly careful not to take inspiration from living artists. I was also deeply hurt by the comments and stories dragging our name. I remember every single one. I will hold that grudge.

Anyway.

We’re done letting this hang over us. We’re going back to making patches. Lots of them. He may resurface and talk shit. I hope I’m strong enough now to ignore it.



This idea that one person can colonise all handmade embroidered patches is bullshit, and it keeps the people we work with out of work.

Lastly: I know what it feels like to think your work has been stolen, so I do sympathise. I feel awful that anyone would feel awful because of something we were involved in. But we did nothing wrong. The only mistake was backing down and, in doing so, minimising the work of many people to appease one.

Natural dyes

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about natural dyeing recently. This happens in cycles – usually around this time of year, when people have been cooped up all winter and are desperate to be outside learning crafts (or, at least, Story mfg-type crafts).

The most common question is: “How can I re-dye this thing I love?” My answer is often disappointing, but here it is.

I worry that we make natural dyeing look easy. You can naturally dye at home, and I encourage you to try – but you can’t do it like us. You can make cheese at home too, but it won’t be anything like a 100-year-old aged Italian cheese (I know nothing about cheese).

If what you want is the act of making, the chaos, the experiment, you’ll love dyeing at home. If you want perfect results, you probably won’t.

The dyers we work with have specialist equipment (even if that’s a clay pit in the ground, it’s one designed to their specifications), decades of experience, and long-held recipes and systems. As someone who’s a passable natural dyer myself, I’ve seen first-hand the difference this makes.

You have to dedicate your life to this to get the results you can buy from Story mfg. That’s part of why it costs what it does. There is, quite literally, one dye house that can achieve many of the colours we do at the depth we want. We found them right at the beginning and have worked with them ever since. We thought they were one of many. They’re one in a million.

We’ve trialled at least ten other natural dye houses and even more independent makers – which is a lot, because this “industry” is tiny. None can achieve the deep blacks, olives and purples we love without adding toxic chemicals. Light natural colours are achievable in many places. The deep ones are not.

Also: you don’t even have to love natural dyes to enjoy Story mfg. This is for us, not you.

Katy loves the colours and the craft, but she has zero interest in the chemistry of it, and that’s perfect. She once said, “It doesn’t seem like it wants us to understand it, and I respect that.” She also says we shouldn’t drink cranberry juice because it doesn’t taste like cranberries want to be wet, so… make of that what you will.

This is why I don’t post tutorials or host workshops much anymore. Without all of this context, I worry people will try dyeing expensive items at home and feel they’ve “ruined” them when the result isn’t perfect.

Natural dyeing is hard.

If you want to try anyway, there are loads of tutorials online, or come to one of our workshops when we do them again. If what you want is a flawless, predictable result at home, there are plenty of non-natural options that will do exactly that.

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Shop

We’re (almost) definitely opening the studio to visitors from around April, for a summer season – maybe just a couple of months. We’ve had loads of questions and DMs about this, which is really encouraging.



More soon.

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