Merchant & Mills

• Style: The decision was made to put style to work in our presentation and packaging, as a language that would attract the very people that had hitherto overlooked sewing. Equally we were determined to include the steadfast makers and menders who had continued regardless of current trends.

• Purpose: In supplying patterns, fabrics and tools that allowed the creation of a desirable functioning wardrobe. We offered a viable, wearable alternative to the increasingly indistinguishable options of the high street.

Merchant & Mills continues to grow steadily, evolving and developing as experience and ideas demand. Carolyn and Roderick now travel the world in search of unique and beautiful fabrics, finding aesthetic and practical inspiration along the way. Merchant & Mills products are stocked in the world’s most respected outlets and the company has successfully collaborated with London’s V&A Museum and Alexander McQueen.

New patterns and products emerge, never rushed to market, but slowly developed to be exemplary, desirable and pragmatic.
Our ethos is to respect the roots of sewing, from trade to home dressmaking, as we enable and inspire more people to find the satisfaction of simply making. To this end, we have published three instructive, illustrated books.

And to entice those who have yet to find the wherewithal or time to construct garments for themselves, we have recently launched LABEL – a capsule collection of ready to wear laundered linen with the distinctive DNA of Merchant & Mills.

Carolyn Denham has a degree in Fashion design and has worked in New York, Italy and London.
Roderick Field is a respected photographer with works in the National Portrait Gallery.