The Spring Edit began in October with a box of dye trials and ended in May with fourteen pieces. Between those two points, rather a lot was thrown away.
Colour first
We start with shade before silhouette, which is the opposite of how most collections are built. Eleven base colours went to the dyers; four came back the way we wanted them on the first attempt. Two took five rounds. One never worked at all. A particular soft green that read beautifully on cotton and turned grey on silk, for reasons the dyers explained at length and we still do not entirely accept.
What we abandoned
Two designs did not survive sampling. The first was a heavily worked organza cape that looked exactly right on the stand and pulled badly the moment anyone moved their arms. The second was a lehenga with embroidery carried all the way to the hem, technically fine and so heavy that wearing it for an evening would have been a genuine imposition.
Both are in the studio somewhere. Neither will be made again.
What survived
The pieces that made it share a quality we did not plan for and noticed only afterwards: the embroidery stops. It concentrates at the yoke or the border and then gives up, leaving plain fabric to do the rest of the work. The collection is lighter than anything we have made before, in both senses.
The last month
Sampling closes, the karigars move onto production, and the design team stops touching anything. That handover is the hardest part of the calendar. There is always one more adjustment somebody wants to make, and the discipline is in not making it.
Fourteen pieces. Seven months. It is not an efficient way to work.