Vanda Fine Clothing - Official Affiliate Thread

[gshen]

Dear all,

I joined Styleforum in 2007, initially obsessing about denim and peacoats in the SW&D side, and eventually making a career out of mens clothing. I owe much of what I know about menswear to this very forum and the good friends I've made along the way, so it really feels like things have come full circle by finally becoming an affiliate on Styleforum.

Here's a little history about how Vanda Fine Clothing came to be:

In early 2010, I started selling homemade pocket squares out of old kimono silks on the B&S forums while I was in college - these were made by Diana, my then-girlfriend and now-wife. A year later, we challenged ourselves by teaching ourselves tiemaking - how hard could it be, right? (It took us a good part of a year to get things somewhat right!)

Our little venture made us realize how much we enjoyed crafting beautiful things with our own hands, but we did not have concrete plans to go into menswear full time. At least not until we took a vacation to San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, where the thriving environment of independent stores really inspired us to start our own business. Instead of starting a career in finance as I was supposed to, we dived right into the business, and Vanda Fine Clothing was born in 2011.

Our goal with Vanda Fine Clothing has always been simple – to craft our products to the best that they can be, and to have our customers enjoy wearing our products as much as we enjoy crafting them. We source our fabrics and trimmings directly from the finest folks in the industry, from handprinted silks in Macclesfield to shuttle loom woven grenadines in Como.

We are particularly proud of the fact that all our neckties, pocket squares and bow ties are made from start to finish in our own workshop in Singapore, where my wife and I plus our one employee cut and sew everything by hand, one piece at a time. It takes us about 3 hours to sew a necktie from scratch, but you watch see a condensed version of our necktie making process in this video:


[VIDEO][/VIDEO]


Based on the feedback that we received over the past four years, we've recently upgraded our website and implemented a rewards program. So you can be rest assured we're constantly thinking of ways to do better. If you have any suggestions for us at all, please feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] or a PM here.

Please also feel free to ask us any questions or request additional photos - that's what we're here for!

Cheers
Gerald & Diana

 

[Claghorn]

Welcome (and about time y'all became official!)

 

[Murlsquirl]

What he ^ said!

 

[LA Guy]

It's always gratifying to see our forum members get to pursue their passion and turn their enthusiasm for menswear into their career. When j and I articulated what we wanted to do with the forum, many years ago now, one of the important points was that we wanted to have a place where small businesses could take seed and grow. We've been fortunate enough to see this happen many times over.

I've been watching the progress of gshen and Vanda for years now, and am very happy to welcome them as official affiliate vendors on the forum.

Cheers,

Fok.

 

[Andy57]

As a satisfied customer, it's good to see you start up an affiliate thread!

 

[Mr. Six]

Welcome (back) Gerald and Diana! Great to have you as affiliates. And now I'm reminded to re-send an email that might have gotten lost over the holidays.

 

[Salad]

Very cool vid. I've coveted more than a few of your ties as long as you've been making them, lol. I'll be ordering one in the near future. The hand stitched edge roll on the backside of the ends have a distinctive, beautiful shape. It's the soft "roundness" of the corners that I find most appealing. Oh, and the front of the ties are nice too.

 

[gshen]

Thanks everyone!

Huge thanks to @LA Guy for giving us the green light to sell our stuff on B&S when we just started out. Chances are we would never have started Vanda without Styleforum and its members.

If anyone is keen on a rerun of neckties you missed out, we can bring some fabrics back if there is sufficient interest (~20 ties). This obviously wouldn't apply to vintage/deadstock fabrics, but anything else should be possible!

 

[Claghorn]

Any chance you do any more squares along the lines of the samurai cotton? It's probably one of my favorite squares from y'all and I wear it very regularly

 

[gshen]

That was vintage kimono fabric, and sold out super quick! We can be on the lookout for more, but it's never possible to know whether we can get anything similar. We could probably work on some similar designs to be printed on silk though.

 

[Claghorn]

What was the story behind it?

 

[gshen]

^ Like most of our kimono fabrics, we get them from old fabric dealers in Japan. It's hard to tell the specific age of these fabrics, but sometimes you'll find clues, like a newspaper dated from the 60's used to stuff the cardboard roll the fabrics are rolled on, like these:

 

[gshen]

Good news all - we now offer free registered airmail postage worldwide for orders above S$350! For orders under $350, we still offer the same flat rate shipping rates that we used to. No coupon code is required, and you'll see the free shipping option at checkout if your order qualifies.

For Styleforum members, we are also offering an extra 30% on your rewards points. Please leave us a note on checkout with your Styleforum username and we'll add the points to your account manually.

 

[gshen]

Some white warp Japanese 'grenadines' for spring/summer are in the works!

We picked the middle quality for the weave, and the light blue shade in the furthest right, and a bunch of other colours

 

[jcmeyer]

Great to see you here, Gerald. My favorite tie is still my green Vanda... and being able to choose the length and width is a huge benefit.

If you're taking requests, I'd love to see some dark chocolate brown shantung pop up at some point - similar to the green or these blues:

All the best!