Raw Hem is a small clothing thing run from a flat above a chip shop in Hackney. We make about two hundred pieces a season, in linen and heavy cotton, in Portugal, by people we have visited and shaken hands with.
This is the seventeenth zine. The drop goes live on Friday May 2nd at 9pm. Thirty pieces. No restocks. No "available in dusty rose".
Raw Hem started in 2017 in the back room of a charity shop on Mare Street. We sewed sixty pairs of trousers from off-cuts and posted them in jiffy bags with a folded zine.
Nine years later the trousers are made in Porto, the linen comes from Belgium, and the zine is stitched on a riso machine on Hackney Road. Everything else has stayed the same.
We do not run sales. We do not chase seasons. We do not produce more than we can ship in two months. We do not reply to wholesale enquiries from people who have never met us.
If that sounds annoying — and we accept that it might — we suggest, respectfully, that you shop somewhere else. There are excellent options. We will recommend three of them on request.
— Cal & Mira ✦Caught the 6:25 to Porto on Monday with three half-finished patterns and a head full of doubt. Spent the day with our pattern-cutter Vasco, who, on seeing the new shop coat sleeve, said "this is much too narrow for a person who picks things up," and then drew the correct sleeve on the back of a paper bag.
Came home with twelve corrected patterns, a small loaf, and a renewed conviction that you cannot, under any circumstances, design clothes from a screen.
Continue reading →Last quarter we received 134 garments back for repair — eighty-three trousers, twenty-eight overshirts, fourteen coats, nine tees, and one mysterious orphaned scarf with a note from someone called Brenda.
Every one of them came back to us free of charge, by post, and went out again, mended, three to nineteen days later. We mend, we replace, we re-bind. We do not, ever, charge for it. This is the only feature of our business model that has, so far, worked.
Continue reading →| The Shop | Address | Carries | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goods ★ HACKNEY · UK | 22 Mare Street, E8 | Full collection | Original stockist · since '18 | Open daily → |
| The Standard ★ MARGATE · UK | 16 Marine Terrace, CT9 | Linen pieces only | Coastal stock · summer only | Wed–Sun → |
| OFR ★ PARIS · FR | 20 Rue Dupetit-Thouars, 75003 | Zine + small goods | French exclusive partner | Tue–Sat → |
| Verso ★ LISBON · PT | Rua das Flores 14, 1200 | Full collection | Portuguese launch '23 | Mon–Sat → |
| Volcanic Tongue ★ GLASGOW · UK | Argyle Street, G2 | Trousers & tees | Member discount applies | Sat–Sun → |
| Soto Berlin ★ BERLIN · DE | Torstraße 72, 10119 | Outerwear only | Cold-season exclusive | Tue–Sat → |
| Hester ★ AMSTERDAM · NL | Spuistraat 218, 1012 | Full collection | Joined our list this season | Wed–Sun → |
One letter, the night before each drop. Three drops a year. Sometimes a sketch from Mira. Easy to leave. We do not sell your address — to anyone — ever.