ABOUT

FOLKARD is an old Norman name — folc, people; hard, steadfast. It crossed from France to England a thousand years ago; with this house it returns to Paris.

The colour stayed Japanese — 朱, shu, cinnabar, the red of lacquer and torii gates. It is the colour of the one line of stitching that runs down the centre-back seam of every coat — on the outside, from collar to hem. The spine of the garment, made visible. One house, one thread, one colour. The red thread is the signature.

Maison Folkard began with a question: can a coat hold a person the way architecture holds space? The answer came from two places at once.

From Japan: the flat plane and the straight line, the interior worth more than the surface, the one unbroken thread, and ma — the value of the space left empty.

From Georgia: the hands — a two-room atelier in old Tbilisi where the coat is built; and the road by which the Istanbul wool crosses the border.

The outside is Georgian. The inside is Japanese. The thread is red.

The mark is a crane, folded from one unbroken line — with a dot where the thread begins. The same beginning is embroidered at the nape of every coat, where the red stitch starts its way down the spine.

The mark is the beginning of the thread. The stitch is the thread in motion.

In our photographs the coat stands among paper cranes. In Japan a thousand are folded as a wish for one person. We fold one — for the person who waits for their coat.

Every coat is cut after you order it. Nothing hangs in a stockroom. Nothing is marked down at the end of a season — there is no end-of-season pile.

A run is thirty pieces. When the thread runs out, the model closes. Your number is the order in which you asked.

It is slower. You wait six to eight weeks. In return the coat is yours before it exists, and nothing is wasted making it.

We sew our own fate.