How We Make Things

Everything we make begins in Istanbul and stays here until it is finished.

It starts with a world

Every Faraway collection begins with a theme, an idea or simply something we can't stop thinking about. From there come the colours, prints, fabrics and clothes.

Our founder, Ayşe, creates most of Faraway's prints herself, drawing and developing them specifically for each collection. Occasionally we work with artists whose work we love, bringing their drawings and artwork into the Faraway world and developing them into prints of their own.

Nothing begins with a catalogue of ready-made prints. The prints belong to the story of the collection they were created for.

Where the clothes begin

Sometimes a piece starts with something from the past. Other times, an idea seems to arrive entirely on its own.

Ayşe collects vintage pieces and takes inspiration from clothing from many different times and places: Victorian and Edwardian dresses, old prairie and Western clothing, Turkish and Anatolian garments, embroidery, antique undergarments and whatever else she happens to fall in love with.

We don't reproduce them. A sleeve, a neckline, a proportion or an entire silhouette might spark an idea and become something completely different. And just as often, a new shape begins with a sketch, an idea or an image in Ayşe's mind that simply needs to be made.

Ayşe sketches the idea and works directly with our pattern makers to turn it into a garment.

Then we make it. And remake it.

Our pattern makers create the first pattern and one of our Istanbul ateliers makes the sample.

Then it comes back.

We fit it, pin it, shorten something, lengthen something else, change a sleeve, move a seam, decide we were completely wrong about something and send it back again.

Usually a piece goes through two or three rounds of sampling and adjustments before we are happy with it.

It isn't a particularly straight line, but that's how the clothes become what they are.

Materials matter

Natural fibres are at the heart of Faraway.

We work mostly with organic cotton, linen, silk and wool, as well as other carefully chosen fibres where they make sense. With the exception of our swimwear, almost everything we make is from natural fibres.

Part of that choice is about the world around us, but it is also about our own bodies. Our skin spends hours touching our clothes. We care about what we put against it.

We also simply love these materials: the coolness of linen, the softness and lightness of cotton voile, the cocoon-like feeling of silk and the warmth of pure wool.

Wool has a particularly long history in our family. Ayşe's family founded Altınyıldız, one of Türkiye's longstanding wool and wool-blend textile manufacturers, in 1952. More than seventy years later, we still source wool from the same mill, sometimes finding beautiful deadstock fabrics from past production and sometimes having pure wool fabrics made for us.

Whenever we can, we choose natural fibres and use existing and deadstock fabrics when we find something beautiful enough to make into Faraway.

Made in Istanbul

Every Faraway piece is made in Istanbul.

Our dresses, blouses, trousers and jackets. Our knitwear. Our swimwear. Our shoes and accessories.

We work with a network of local ateliers and specialist producers rather than one enormous factory. Some of these relationships existed before Faraway did.

When we began in 2019, we sometimes needed as few as 20 pieces of a style, quantities most established producers would never normally take on. Some of the ateliers had worked with Ayşe's family for many years and agreed to make those tiny runs for us because of that relationship. Their generosity gave a very small new brand the chance to begin, and some are still making Faraway with us today.

Over the years we've found new makers too, including women who have started businesses of their own. Several of our specialist producers are women-owned, including the makers behind our knitwear and swimwear.

We have grown since those first 20-piece runs, but not enormously. Most Faraway pieces are still made in quantities of around 40 or 50.

Made in small quantities

Small production means we don't generally reproduce a piece once it sells out.

Instead, we return to the shapes we love.

A favourite Faraway dress might appear again next summer, but in the colours, fabric or print of a completely different collection. The silhouette stays with us while the piece continues to change.

So when a particular Faraway print or version disappears, it will very often remain exactly where it belongs: in that collection.

Using what remains

Making clothes always creates remnants.

Where we can, we turn the useful pieces into something else: hair ties, little pouches, gemstone bags or children's pieces.

Sometimes these details find their way back to the original garment too. Our gemstone knits, for example, have come with spare stones tucked into little pouches made from leftover Faraway fabric.

They're small things, but we would rather make something from a beautiful piece of fabric than throw it away.

Many hands, one piece

There are many people behind a Faraway garment.

Someone makes the pattern. Someone cuts the fabric. Someone sits at a sewing machine. Someone makes the buttonholes, attaches the trims, presses the garment and checks it before it reaches us.

Our clothes aren't hand-sewn, and we don't call them handmade unless something truly is. But they are very much made by people.

In small quantities, close to us, here in Istanbul. Just the way we like it.