Forty Years on the Veranda

A letter from Caroline.

I want to tell you something before you look at a single dress.

I am not a fashion person. I don't know what's on the runway. I never have. I couldn't tell you what is in this autumn and I have never once read Vogue.

What I know, I learned from my mother.

June spent forty years on her porch. Not doing nothing: the women of our neighbourhood came up those steps all day long, and half of them left wearing something she had picked for them. She would hold a blouse against a woman's shoulders, look at her for about three seconds, and say yes or no. She was never wrong. Not once that I can remember.

She never sold a thing. She just told you the truth. Whether it fit your morning. Whether you would still reach for it in five years. Whether it was worth keeping.

That is how I choose every piece here. Not because it is on trend. Because it is beautiful, well made, and worth keeping.

And every season I do what she did with her own wardrobe: I prune it. Something goes so something else can come in. What leaves is not less beautiful, it simply belongs to the season we just had, and it goes at an honest price. A garden you never prune will not bloom.

So: welcome. Take your time. If something here finds its place in your week, that is the whole point.

June would have liked you already.

— Caroline