Hi everyone,
Long time no hear. It’s Lauri here from Lean Garments. (Couldn’t get our old account logged in for some reason) I’m glad to see that our thread is still up. First, big thanks to everyone who are still tagging along and hi to everyone, who doesn’t yet know us. I’d like to use this post to explain what’s been going on for the past year or so and what will happen next. You can read the story of how Lean Garments started from the opening post.
As you may know, we’re a menswear brand from Finland. We’re nowadays three instead of two engineers: Lauri, Karri and Cláudio. Cláudio is a Portuguese fellow living in Finland and he’s been a part of Lean Garments for half a year now.
This is going to be an essay, but as someone reading our newsletter may know, I enjoy writing essays. And there’s simply just too much to say for only two paragraphs.
PastIn late 2014 we sold our first button-down shirts. Those blue button-down shirts were made in China and it was a decent product. For a year we continued manufacturing clothing in China and did all sorts of stuff: popovers, loopwheeled sweaters, chambray button-downs and selvedge chinos. We always knew our products to be good and we believed in them, but deep down we also knew that to produce the ultimate value to our customers, you have get the fundamentals perfect and the most important part of making a shirt is the production and how it’s handled.
Last year we sat down to think about the future of Lean Garments. We agreed that we would need to rethink our mission a bit. We decided to move our production to Europe. We first worked with a Turkish factory and then with one in Estonia. Both were decent, but it wasn’t until Cláudio introduced us to our new Portuguese factory that we realised what we were fully capable of.
PresentThe factory we are now working with at the moment is pretty much one of, if not the best name in the business in Portugal. They produce for brands such as Vetements, Acne, Givenchy and too many others to name. Any brand positioning themselves as luxury and producing in Portugal has most likely at one point or another worked with this factory.
Just to clarify: we’re not a high-fashion brand. The essence of Lean Garments is the same as it used to be. We’re three guys, who enjoy quality clothing. We try to make them better than others out there. That’s pretty simple. By having our production in a place we can completely trust is just laying the foundations for our work.
We now offer a white and a grey button-down shirt. Already this week we're reintroducing the revamped blue button-down.
The current iteration of the button-down shirt involved more than 15 modifications to the detailing that had to be revised over the course of a few prototype iterations during Spring and Summer. The collar is still rolling and all the details are there that make a button-down shirt a button-down shirt.
The fabrics, the stitching, the buttons (thick MOP) and everything else is now on a level we’re fully satisfied with. Karri just got rid of his Gitman Vintage shirts, since he thought he didn’t need them anymore - that’s something! To sustain this level of production quality and to be able to do what we think is best for our customers, we had to raise our prices. Hopefully you’ll find that justified.
The sizing of the shirts is a fairly normal slim-fit sizing and in most of the cases, you should stick with your normal shirt size.
FutureOur goal is to introduce more button-downs in different colors and fabrics and also introduce new products to our catalogue. We’re already making progress in some product development and things should start moving pretty quickly as the Fall and Winter approaches.
Say hi and share your thoughts!
As you may realise from reading this, things have changed quite a bit for us, but I hope you think it’s to a good direction.
We would be thrilled to hear your thoughts about, I don’t know, everything! You can post here and I’ll try to reply to everyone within a reasonable timeframe. You can also drop us an email to
[email protected] or on Facebook.
leangarments.com
Cheers,
Lauri
Lean Garments
