As most of you know, P and I opened our online shop azahar natural clothing in April – which you can see here by clicking on our logo:
I thought this journal entry could be used for getting feedback from people about the clothes – styles, colours, fabrics etc. And please don’t be afraid to be critical!
If you have any knowledge about or experience with online promotion, mutual links, etc, drop in on Noggin’s post about Webtraffic, which you can find here
casa azahar 
Ever the optimist, I've started working on the next collection for Winter 2006. So far the fabrics I have in mind are a heavier-weight linen, a very fine pinwale cotton corduroy (offered plain and 'crinkled') and a few silk options. The silk will mostly be 'raw silk' which is a thicker kind of 'nubbly' silk (gorgeous texture), as well as a silk jersey fabric that also comes 'tubular' for making one-size garments with no side seams. And there is also a silk 'denim' available, which looks very interesting – only available in 'natural off-white'.
The bonus with the silk supplier is that there is no minimum order. Okay, it's slightly more expensive if I order just 10 metres rather than a piece (about 40-50 metres) but it would allow us to offer more colour options.
Even though we cannot buy new sample material yet I can still start working on sketches and basic patterns.
I have quite a few ideas for what I'd like to do next but, as always, some feedback about what others might like to see made up would help me with choosing the styles and colours. Also, are there any designs from the linen collection that you think would be good repeated in one of these other fabrics?
Also, colours. I'm thinking some 'natural white' stuff for a couple of basic linen shirts (and 'winter white' silk denim trousers) but other colour options are a deep hunter green, burgundy, black, chocolate brown (also available for the pinwale corduroy). And the basic raw silk material (medium weight) is available in about 30 different colours.
Thanks guys!
az
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Very nice. Do you have them in my size?
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*ignores Eddie* đ
Heard back from the supplier for the fine pinwale corduroy, who said they can't guarantee delivery.
Then we received a catalogue from the UK silk supplier, with updated price lists, and I am so excited about what they have to offer!
Have decided that instead of offering two seasonal collections a year that we will instead offer collections based on fabric groups – so our next one will be the azahar silk collection.
And since we – so far – have suppliers that can supply our fabrics year round, we can just keep adding more designs, not having to conform to the weather or season. I mean, with an online shop, it's always winter or summer somewhere in the world.
So we're both happy with that decision and it also helps me to just focus on the silks for now, meanwhile keeping in mind any new ideas to add to the linen collection, including maybe adding a few heavier-weight linen items for winter.
az
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Burgundy. And dark blue and a strong yellow, although those are not on your list. Can you get the natural white dyed somewhere? Can you get the natural white of your first collection dyed so you could add color options there, too? Just a thought..
Good luck đ
sunny
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My favourite type of linen is the heavier one. I’m wearing a brown linen out fit now. The thing about linen is that it creases but somehow it doesn’t matter, it still looks elegant.
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hi sunny! đ
You’re right, I should have at least have some sort of blue in there – I keep forgetting about blue somehow. . .
The main reason the linen collection is all in natural white is because of the large minimum orders per colour per fabric (100-200 metres!) required by that supplier. With the silks we’ll be able to order much smaller quantities so will be able to offer more colours.
Anyhow, very nice to see you here. Don’t be a stranger, ya hear?
az
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hi Alex!
Thanks for stopping by. I totally agree with you about linen still looking fine with the creases. Funny thing about linen. It also looks great freshly pressed. Then there’s a bit of time when it *starts* getting wrinkled that’s perhaps a bit dodgy. But curiously, after that the creases soften up and become ‘textural’ rather than just looking like ‘wrinkles’.
My friend and model Carmen has the short-sleeved pj top and wide-leg pj trousers and she tells me they look and feel fabulous on. Great for hanging out at home or when she goes to the beach (which she does quite a lot during the summer). The transparency of the light linen – it’s almost a gauze – means she wouldn’t feel comfy wearing it as street wear in the city. But at the beach she feels fine wearing it out in the evenings when she and her husband go out to eat.
Meanwhile, the garments made from the medium-weight linen are totally okay as street wear. We’ll be adding a heavier-weight one to the linen collection when we can afford to. And hopefully more colour options too – our supplier does a lovely ‘toast’ colour and also a soft khaki green, which would mix & match nicely with the natural white stuff.
az
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We are experimenting with ebay at the moment. Could be interesting. We’ve put one dress up for ‘auction’ to see what the response is like – also, in our description we mention ‘azahar natural clothing’ but cannot place a link to it as we are using ebay.com and so our page would have to be in US dollars.
Still, if anyone googles ‘azahar natural clothing’ they can find us easily enough.
So…fingers crossed! This could be a good way to get our website seen by a lot more people – in a roundabout fashion, but hey, it only cost us five bucks.
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