Tefkit is a small family business (Susan and Alek) based in St Leonards-on-Sea in the UK. We´ve been running this business for 9 years now with a daily commitment to arguing over every detail, that´s family for you.

We draw inspiration from our local world; for our collection Pierscapes we printed photographs of the sea taken from our local pier. Our current collection features photographs of herbarium specimens taken from Susan´s garden. Our silhouettes begin as old gardening clothes bought on ebay which we then add our own touch to.

Susan wanted to make the most special clothes with floral prints and artisanal details, Alek wanted to make technical gardening clobber to make up for the lack of good gardening gear around. We´ve ended up somewhere in between with two important rules: the clothes should be comfortable and easy to wear for manual work and Susan can do whatever embroidery she wants.

In terms of sustainability we´re doing what we can by switching to organic fabrics wherever possible (this collection we have only one non-organic fabric). We´ve also switched our focus to using linens and hemps due to the fact that they can be grown without pesticides and with very little water use. We source from suppliers we trust rather than just accepting anything labelled as”ecological”. One of the most important things we do is to hold back most of our fabric to be made to order, this allows us to offer a wider range of sizes and adapt to market demand resulting in almost no fabric wastage.

Every piece is cut and sewn in our small studio in St Leonards-on-Sea. This allows us to guarantee a high level of manufacturing.