What the compliment is actually about

there is a sentence that turns up in our reviews more often than almost any other, and for a long time i read it the wrong way round.

Ninety-three women mentioned it without being asked

We have 1,185 reviews now. Nobody is asked about compliments. There is no question on the form that says did anyone notice. And still, 93 of those reviews bring it up unprompted. Someone stopped me in the street. Everyone asks where I got it. I get compliments every single time I wear it.

For a while I took that as the good news and left it there. It is the kind of line a brand puts on a banner and stops thinking about.

Then I counted the other thing. In 189 of those reviews, a woman describes how the piece made her feel. Not how it looked. How it felt to be inside it. And in the nineteen reviews where both appear in the same paragraph, the feeling almost always comes first in the sentence, and the compliment arrives second, as a consequence.

Read the order of the sentence

Aja wrote: "From the way the fabric feels on my skin to the way that it hangs on my body, I'm in love. The pieces are often complimented, and I feel more myself wearing them than in anything else."

Laurie: "Very comfortable, makes me feel powerful. I get so many compliments every time I wear it."

Kathy wore hers to a retreat: "I felt like a million bucks in it and got so many compliments."

Notice what comes first each time. Comfortable, then powerful, then the compliments. Myself, then noticed. Not one woman writes I got compliments, so I felt good. It runs the other way, every time, in every review I have read.

What people are actually responding to

Here is the part I want to give you, and it is useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us.

When a stranger stops you, they are almost never responding to the garment. They cannot feel the fabric weight from four metres away. They do not know what it cost or whose hands made it. What they can see, across a room, in under a second, is whether you are still negotiating with yourself.

Most of us are. We tug at a hem. We check our reflection in a shop window and adjust something. We hold one arm across the body without deciding to. That is an entire conversation happening in the muscles, and other people read it without knowing they are reading it.

A woman who has stopped tugging looks different. Not better. Different. She is taking up exactly the amount of space she takes up. Her shoulders are where they live. The nervous system of everyone near her registers that as ease, and ease draws people in a way that a beautiful dress on a braced body never does.

The compliment is a person trying to name that, and reaching for the nearest available word, which is almost always the dress.

What this does not mean

It does not mean the cloth is irrelevant. If it were, I would not have spent years of my life making it. A piece that fits badly, or scratches at the neck, or rides up when you walk, will keep you inside the negotiation no matter how settled you are underneath. The garment either gets out of your way or it does not.

What it means is the order. The garment's job is to remove the friction. Everything after that is yours.

That is the reason we cut a deep armhole, and wash the linen before it ever reaches you, and make so much of the collection in one size that moves rather than one size that holds you to a measurement. Not so a piece will be admired. So it will be forgotten.

The Virgo Rising Gown is the clearest example of that thinking in the collection. Long sleeves in Bali heat should not work and somehow do, because the bamboo rayon is cut wide enough to move air. Deep V, drawstring at the waist you can pull close or leave open, a side slit so it walks when you walk. It has presence without asking you to manage it.

A small thing to try this week

Take the piece you reach for when nobody is watching. The one you put on at home on a day with no plans. Wear it somewhere it feels slightly too casual for.

Then notice, honestly, whether anything bad happens.

In my experience the opposite happens, and it happens quickly enough to be a little uncomfortable. That is not the clothing. That is you, unguarded, in public, which almost never happens, and people can feel it from across the room.

If this is the thread you keep pulling, I wrote about the other side of it in the piece you are saving for nothing, and about what ninety-four women told us they wanted from their wardrobes in this letter.

With love from Bali,
Myrah