Last week, we took a trip down to Kent with our photographer Denisa to visit our manufacturers and see the production process of our new stock in person. The team at Mustard are always incredibly kind and welcoming and made us feel right at home. We ended up spending most of the day there with them taking photos and filming various processes at different points on different products as they are all hand made or at the least hand finished by the team. This is so we can put together a video to run on the website that people can watch to really highlight the time and effort that goes into the production of our products and the beauty of having that done here in the UK where we know the team and are welcome to visit whenever we want to! It is a small company with a team of 10 in the workroom, the venue is a lovely old period building with curved windows and lots of light. It’s great to see orders set out for other companies ready to go, rolls of fabrics on the side and various ties hung up in different corners, you really get that sense of an authentic creative industry at work.
We had almost forgotten what our own fabrics looked like but it was a treat to see them being laid out and cut before being made into ties, bow-ties and pocket squares. Some fabrics are new and different for us- velvets, harris tweed wools and beautiful paisleys. Occasionally when time is short we order fabrics and have them sent direct to the manufacturers instead of coming to us first, this can be hit or miss. Some things turn out better than expected, e.g. the plain cottons we chose a s the contrast tipping for the Paisley ties were a perfect match but two of the Harris tweed wools were nothing like the colour they had appeared to be online, they were already cut so can’t send them back – that’s a lesson learnt! We’re now stuck with a lime green wool tie that it seems unlikely many men will want to buy, just have to hope the colour comes into fashion somehow! Even so it didn’t detract from an enjoyable day which reinforced our appreciation for our manufacturers and all that they do.
