Atelier Indochine makes clothes only with the highest quality materials.
Khadi
Khadi is a handmade cloth that is both stylishly expressive and rustic.
It is said that khadi dates back to the Indus civilization and this material has been hand spun and woven on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years.
In the early 20th Century, Mahatma Gandhi spread khadi as a means of resisting British colonial rule (in India, inexpensive machine-woven cloth from Britain was dominant). Khadi became a symbol and an integral part of India’s independence movement.
Khadi is mainly woven from cotton, but can also contain silk or wool. All these are hand-spun into yarn using a spinning wheel called a “charka.” The result is softly spun and woven by human hands, so it is airy and cool in summer and warm in winter.
The thickness of the cloth is expressed in counts. Khadi “Count 100,” for example, means that one gram of cotton is hand-spun to a length of 100 meters: the higher the count, the thinner the yarn. When yarn reaches 600 counts, it is considered “national treasure grade” khadi.
In our atelier, we use anywhere from 56 to 300 khadi count, mainly cotton and silk.
Linen (from flax and ramie)
Linen has a long history as a fiber for woven fabric, some say the oldest fiber of Mankind. In our atelier, we use linen fabric produced from both flax and ramie in our clothing.
Linen can grow without the use of agricultural chemicals, and the resulting fabric resists mildew, dries quickly, has a natural gloss, and is stronger than cotton fiber, therefore long lasting.
We use linen woven from the highest quality yarn produced on modern European and Japanese high-tech looms. These yarns are well washed prior to weaving and the resulting cloth is smooth and will not cause itching. The more one wears these fabrics, the softer they become, and the more comfortable.
Linen yarns often feature “slubs,” small knots occurring along the length of the yarn. These “defects” were once associated with lower-quality yarns, but now the presence of slubs is desired and considered appealing and fashionable.
Cotton
We also use soft Japanese cotton gauze, as well as Indian organic cotton fabric made from cotton harvested from fields in India that had not been sprayed with chemicals for at least three years.
■ Sewing thread and buttons
Both the sewing thread and button thread we use are 100% cotton. Buttons are made from seashells.
