Bengaluru
The workroom
Nine people, forty minutes from the shop, in a room with eleven machines and one cutting table.
Everything Meridian sells is cut and sewn in one workroom in Bengaluru. We do not use a broker and we do not place a run anywhere we have not stood in.
A run is between forty and ninety pieces. That is small enough that the same machinist sews a whole garment rather than one operation of it, and small enough that when something is wrong, it is wrong on nine pieces and not on nine hundred.
Eleven machines
One machinist sews a whole garment, not one operation of it.
Four steps
Pattern, cut, make, finish
01
The pattern
Drawn by hand on spot-and-cross paper, then cut in calico and worn for a week before anything is graded. Most patterns are changed after that week.
02
The cut
Cloth is relaxed flat for twenty-four hours before it is laid, because linen that is cut straight off the roll will move afterwards and the garment will twist.
03
The make
One machinist, one garment. Side seams are felled on a single-needle machine — slower than an overlocker, and the reason there is no raw edge inside anything we sell.
04
The finish
Every piece is pressed, measured against the spec, and checked by someone who did not sew it. Pieces that miss the spec by more than a centimetre do not reach the shop.
