Our Makers

Behind every Florimay piece is a person — not a production line. A woman finishing a buttonhole by hand in Porto. A leather cutter in Tuscany who learned the craft from his mother. A knitter in Istanbul who has been making our ribbed crews for four seasons running. We believe that how a garment is made is inseparable from what it is, and that the people who make our clothes deserve to be named, credited, and paid fairly for their work. This page is our attempt to be honest about who they are and how we work together.

Our Production Partners

Florimay doesn't own its own factories, and we don't place one-off orders with the lowest bidder. Instead, we work in long-term partnership with a small, deliberately limited roster of family-run ateliers and specialty mills — most of them independent, most of them led or co-led by women, and many of them second- or third-generation.

The relationship is the point. We visit our partners, we share forecasts a season ahead so they can plan their own workflow, and we pay our invoices on time (a quiet kindness in this industry). In return, we ask for the same consistency back: skilled hands on every piece, transparent labor practices, and a willingness to tell us when something isn't working — a pattern that's fighting them, a deadline that's unrealistic, a fabric that won't behave. The best garments come out of conversations, not commands.

Where Our Clothes Are Made

We work in the regions that genuinely do each craft best — not the cheapest, and not the trendiest.

• Portugal — Our sweaters and knitwear are made in small northern Portuguese knitting mills, a region with a deep tradition of fine-gauge knitting and finishing.
• Italy — Our shoes and select leather goods are produced in family leather ateliers in Tuscany and the Marche, where vegetable tanning and hand-lasting are still living crafts.
• Turkey — Our cotton tops, tees, and lightweight jersey pieces come from cotton specialists near Istanbul and Izmir, working with long-staple Aegean cotton.
• India — Our summer pieces in cotton voile, poplin, and hand-loomed fabrics are made with ethical cotton partners in Jaipur and the surrounding region, many working with GOTS-certified supply chains.

How Small-Batch Actually Works

Most of our styles are produced in runs of 200 to 800 pieces. That's small enough that our makers know each style intimately, and small enough that we almost never end up with dead stock at the end of a season. When a piece sells through, we either reorder it (if the fabric is still available and the fit is right) or we retire it and move on.

The feedback loop is tight. If the first 50 units of a shirt come back with a collar that rolls oddly, we hear about it within days, not months. We revise, we re-sample, and the next run is better. Slow fashion, for us, isn't a marketing word — it's a description of how long it takes to get something right.

What We Audit

Before we place a first order with any new partner, and annually thereafter, we review:

• Wages paid at or above the local prevailing fair-wage benchmark
• Working hours, overtime policy, and rest days
• A strict no-subcontracting clause — the factory we approved is the factory that makes the garment
• Zero tolerance for child or forced labor, with documentation
• Health and safety conditions on the floor
• Annual in-person facility visits by a member of our team

When something falls short, we don't walk away on the first misstep — we work with the partner on a corrective plan with a clear timeline. If the plan isn't met, we end the relationship.

Certifications & Standards

We work toward — and with partners who hold — standards including GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) for organic cotton, OEKO-TEX Standard 100 for tested-safe textiles, Leather Working Group certification for our tanneries, and Responsible Wool Standard for wool blends. Not every piece carries every certification, and we'd rather tell you which does than imply they all do. You'll find the specifics on each product page.

Materials Philosophy

How something is made matters as much as who makes it. We choose natural and traceable fibers wherever we can, avoid virgin synthetics in base layers, and design for longevity over trend. You can read more about our approach to fabric sourcing in our Fabric Guide, and our broader environmental commitments on our Responsibly Made page.

How We Hold Ourselves Accountable

We publish an annual update on our Sustainability page covering our maker list, audit findings, materials mix, and the things we didn't get right. We'd rather be specific and imperfect than polished and vague. If you ever want to know where a particular piece was made, or by whom, write to us — we'll tell you.