Slow fashion bespoke label Couture To Your Door has a no-polyester policy

Shopping for fashion can be a harrowing experience - online or in-store - from wrong sizes and uncomfortable materials to clothes that are just very blah and soulless. No wonder then that bespoke fashion that is made-to-measure is gaining in popularity.

British label Couture To Your Door (CTYD) promotes slow fashion practices while making the world of luxury accessible to everyone with a timeless and elegant collection that is personalised and environmentally friendly. FashionUnited spoke with CTYD-founder and designer Maria Loria via email about the appeal of well-designed clothes that are customisable and made to last a lifetime.

How did the idea of Couture To Your Door come about?

I suspected that there was a gap in the market for a designer to lead the way towards wearable upcycled high fashion that was environmentally kinder, designed well and that was made transparently by someone who deeply cared about human rights, biodiversity, and the climate.

Over the past two years, I’d also witnessed firsthand through my rental brand the challenges that people were facing finding fashion that was well tailored and that fitted them to their exact aesthetic and body shape. Customers would try on a rental dress they loved but that they knew the neckline didn’t suit them, or a beautiful statement coat they loved but that the length was too long or they wished the print had more of a darker palette to suit their skin tone.

I’d also had direct experience seeking pre-loved fashion from mid-market and high fashion brands and the clothes not fitting me due to my odd waist-to-hip ratio. I knew that if I was experiencing these issues that many other people must be too.

Is Couture To Your Door a counter balance to mass production?

With the shift towards e-commerce and re-commence, I was concerned that the gap between ordering online and finding something that fitted was widening. This to me translated into a future filled with more mass-production disappointment, more packaging, more journeys, more returns, and more waste multiplied by infinity! I was seeing a shift towards fashion becoming a commodity market for both fast fashion, marketplaces and the luxury conglomerates and it made me quite sad.

The middle market garments were also beginning to look generic to me, yet the recommended retail prices were in the hundreds of pounds. Most items at the top, middle and bottom of the market when I checked the brand labels were still being made from 100 percent polyester or some form of synthetic textile or newly produced virgin material. The lines between fast fashion, mid-market and ready-to-wear luxury looked blurred with the only real differentiator being where the garment was made.

With such an inordinate amount of vintage cotton, jacquard and unwanted synthetic textiles already in existence, I questioned why the mid-market and luxury brands were not further ahead with a robust ready-to-wear upcycling, made-to-measure and made-to-order service and why they were not repurposing existing textiles? With their wealth and resources, why were they still using new cotton and recycled polyester when there was more than enough already in existence that could be repurposed without the harsh and energy-draining process of recycling?

It was at this point that I decided to create CTYD. A semi pret-a-porter type operating model geared towards getting it right the first time, with the belief that if the customer could get something that is to their exact requirement and fit that they would wear the item over and over and eventually turn their backs on commodity fashion.

You are also the founder of rental service WearMyWardrobeOut - how do the two platforms complement each other? Is there a crossover in terms of clients?

Yes indeed, lots of crossover. The rental platform was initially a service for people to hire statement outfits sourced only from textiles already in circulation which I’d repaired and refashioned for rewear and for rental. I was seeing lots of customers wanting to rent a one-of-a-kind garment but it being marginally too big or small for them. So, I’d offer to temporarily tailor their rental so they could wear it for their event because they wanted to wear something totally unique to them.

I then started to receive fabric donations from repeat rental customers, a mix of vintage, dated curtains and textile pieces, so I began creating upcycled garments in a sample size to list on WearMyWardrobeOut that could be rented out. I’d make these in a size 10-12 because I thought that if they didn’t rent, that I could still wear them myself and they wouldn’t go to waste. Customers then started asking me to make them a bespoke made-to-measure in one of my upcycled designs but in a different print. This led me to create a made-to-order collection on the rental platform. But it was clunky and confusing for people, and they couldn’t self-serve or have the freedom to shop in their familiar online click-through method.

So I created a new platform to enable the end-to-end customisation on CTYD that could be accessed globally by everyone. With the overarching mission being circular and zero waste fashion, whether that’s through renting off the peg, having your existing garments refashioned through alterations or ordering a high fashion, made-to-measure upcycled garment, I wanted to be the person to merge upcycled high fashion with online circular services.