Meet the Parisian Designer Making Clothes Out of 200-Year-Old Fabric

Scarcity is big business. From limited-edition Jordans to the latest MoonSwatch, using scarcity to drive demand has become a pillar of the modern fashion industry, the thinking being that the less of something there is, the more fervently people will covet it. For designer Oliver Church, however, scarcity isn’t a marketing ploy so much as a necessity. From his Parisian atelier, Church crafts his line of jackets and shirts from century-old deadstock fabrics, one piece at a time, and sells his collections to indie menswear retailers, as well as a handful of private customers. His clothes are expensive, and quantities are highly limited, but Church has succeeded in carving out a niche among like-minded menswear nerds who appreciate that scarcity isn’t the point, but a byproduct of doing skillful work at the highest level.Born and raised on the rugged coast of West Auckland, New Zealand, Church cut his teeth in fashion school before decamping to London to find work in the fashion industry. Church worked for Ian Paley at Garbstore’s in-house brand, followed, after moving to Paris, by a stint working for Gareth Casey at Casey Casey. Appropriately enough for someone whose work flies in the face of capitalist consumerism, Church credits France’s socialist welfare system for giving him the financial stability to start his label in 2019. “If I'd stayed in London, it would have taken me 10 more years to be in a position where I could start my own brand,” he says. “Living in France, you have a certain security. It's hard to fire people [here]. It's hard to kick people out of a house. It's hard to raise rents in France. You just can't,” he says.Fabric is at the heart of Church’s craft, and most of his clothes are made from vintage textiles from the 1820s to the 1960s that have been hand-dyed in his studio or at famed French dye house Couleur Garance. The results are soft, lived-in-looking pieces in an earthy palette of indigo, beige, and brown, each of which has been entirely cut and sewn by Church in his workshop. While he spends most of his time filling wholesale orders for the likes of Vancouver’s Neighbour and London’s Mouki Mou, Church still carves out time for two or three private orders each month. His shirts start at around $800, and his lead time is currently around three months, but he’d like to get it down to two. He’s also currently working on a new line of sweaters using mulberry silk sourced from an Italian mill.Church’s clients run the gamut, but they have one thing in common, aside from a love of rare, beautiful clothes. “I’ve had school teachers, people who work in fashion, architects, scientists. I've had writers, photographers, people who work in public administration. It's really varied,” he says. What unites them, he says, is a fanatical attention to the process of making clothes, from the origins of the fabric to the plants used to make the dyes to the intricacies of hand-sewing a buttonhole. “They want to ask questions,” he says. “I like that.”