Distilled is a geek-chic men's fashion line artist collective based out of San Francisco, and an experiment in applying ideas from technology to a non-technology business.
Design Process. We start with something we call an algorithm-enhanced storyboard. Each season, we choose an aspect of human nature that we’d like to explore for the season (for example, idealism), and feed it into an algorithm that generates a storyboard of images, quotations, and color palettes that we use for our design inspiration for the season. Based on the storyboard, we work together with each of our conspirators -- the artists in our collective -- to come up with designs that tell the story of the season.
Open Design. The patterns for all of our garments are available for free, under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 license.
Local Manufacturing. We manufacture our garments close to where they are sold. All of our clothing is made in San Francisco's Mission District, 2 blocks from our office, and within 500 miles of most of our sales.
Agile Manufacturing. We come out with new product every 2 weeks. This allows us to make something as soon as we have an idea, and to iterate on old patterns frequently. And it allows us to make our clothing in limited edition runs of 300 while still staying viable as a business.
Old-school craftsmanship We go to great lengths to make clothing that lasts. Distilled garments are sewn using felled seams, bindings, and single needle construction that make for stronger, cleaner, pieces. We use high-quality fabrics, and we take special effort that our clothing is timeless rather than trend-based. We believe strongly enough in the quality of the product that we offer free garment repair for life on all of our garments.
Small is Beautiful. We believe in human-scale economics (and we thank E.F. Shumacher for the inspiration). All of our garments are made in limited quantities (of 300 or less); our staff is 3 people; we spend no money on PR and no money on magazine ads; and we limit our retail to a small number retail stores who understand what we are trying to achieve with our brand. Doing things on a small scale allows us to innovate more quickly, take better care of our customers, and maintain a unique feel to our clothing.
