Why we started
I bought my first "luxury" silk mask in 2021. £85, from a Goop guide. By month four it had thinned to gauze.
Maya, Jess, and David. Three of us. We worked in different jobs across London, design, operations, comms. None of us textile insiders. All of us watching silk after silk thin within a year. Slip thinned. Lunya thinned. Drowsy fell apart in the wash.
We met Mei at a textile fair in October 2022. She was hand-stitching duchess satin sleep masks at her stand. We bought three between us. By the second night, we knew.
Mei stitched a small batch for us in November 2023, 47 units from her workshop on Shelton Street in Covent Garden. We sold those out in five weeks. By March 2026 we'd sold 4,800 across the full collection.
Why most of it is satin, one piece is silk
Duchess satin is honest. We say so on every product page. Heavyweight polyester satin, woven dense, machine washable. The silk industry sells a lot of marketing about momme weight; most luxury silk masks lie about theirs.
For the pillowcase, we make an exception. 22 momme mulberry silk, Italian-spun from Setificio Mantellassi in Como. Satin doesn't hold up against face oils overnight. Real silk does, if it's actually 22 momme, which most isn't. Slip is 19. Lunya is 19. Brooklinen is 19.
The European mills we source from are OEKO-TEX certified. Our cotton terry comes from a family mill in Guimarães, Portugal. Our cotton voile from Tirupur. Our percale and herringbone, both from Lombardy. Mei finishes every piece by hand. We don't pretend to be silk when we're not, and we don't pretend to be a factory when we're three founders and a maker.
How we make
Made-to-order. When you order, Mei starts cutting your piece within 24 hours. Production takes 3–7 days depending on the item, then it ships. We don't carry stock. We don't overproduce.
We pay Mei above the London Living Wage (£13.85 per hour at time of writing). She apprentices one finisher each year through the Covent Garden Textile Cooperative. The pieces leave the workshop with a single person's signature, not a factory line's stamp.
The trade is speed. A piece you order today doesn't ship for nearly a week. Most people are fine with that. The few who aren't, we refund without argument.