This email is being written from the Basque Country, near Guethary, where I arrived with my family by train after passing through the smoky Bordeaux station, our initial destination. My thoughts are with all those for whom summer has lost its lightness this year due to the heatwave and fires.

The price to pay?

A T-shirt is a small thing, yet it already concentrated everything we are today: a cut designed to the millimeter, just oversized enough like in the 80s, a fabric much more ecological than the standard, a mix of organic cotton and recycled cotton, in a thick jersey, double-needle stitching and a precise construction to prevent twisting after washing.

And at its core, a brand project like a space-time capsule with the best of the past and the ambition for a more sustainable future… at a fair price.

Here we are: too expensive for some, accessible for others, a price is never absolutely fair or accessible, everything is relative. An amount is measurable, but its perception will depend as much on a level of wealth (basically our budget, the starting point, infinite for more and more billionaires but let's save the topic of growing inequalities for another reflection point), as on the portion of that budget allocated to a type of expense.

For example, I wouldn't spend a penny on cigarettes, whose price will always seem too high to me, given that I don't smoke. That I no longer smoke. For 10 years. Happy birthday to my lungs, but that's not today's topic. On the other hand, I spend a (very) significant portion of my budget on really good food in all its forms without a second thought, as long as I feel like I'm enjoying myself, having a happy moment, and tasting the cuisine of talented and passionate people. Speaking of which, in 3 days in the Basque Country, my family devoured Banh Mi from Bogota, opened a bag of Captain Chips, tried Bibammpizz pizzas, all washed down with a small Burgundy Aligoté AmiAmi Vice.

Note: I dream of mapping out Patine's favorite addresses, but you'll have to wait a bit; the summer 27 collection isn't finished, we have a coat to launch in new colors, and I need to learn to prioritize :)

The Brenda denim shorts and the tank tops worn every summer.
The football tee and the Power long-sleeve top and the Tony shirt that I wear all year round and in a thousand ways.
The photographers are 7, 12, and 15 years old, and I thank them.

Better than price: the cost of use, known as "Cost Per Wear"

More interesting than a price, and at the heart of the Patine project, is the notion of "price per wear" or "cost per wear" (CPW): the cost each time you re-wear a garment.

The more you wear your garment, the lower this cost becomes. A piece that tires you out too quickly #fashionfatigue, a piece that looks like nothing after 3 washes will have too high a CPW in any case, whether it's luxury or fast fashion.

When we created Patine, I wanted to rediscover the joy of a very high-quality garment, starting with the material. I felt that this no longer existed; I used to see sublime pieces from before the 90s in my grandmother's closet, then little by little, sad and tired pieces, even though they were much more recent.

We dedicate a very significant amount of time to researching the best materials to develop our garments. Washing tests, weight and density control of a weave... We accept paying a manufacturing cost that cannot go below a certain threshold because we want a high stitch count per cm, French seams, double hems, well-finished buttonholes... All these initial efforts are the essential investment that will then allow us to obtain pieces that age beautifully and can be worn for a long time.
Normally, you feel the difference as soon as you open your package. The weight of certain materials can sometimes be unsettling, but with repeated washing, you start to appreciate their reliability. And these pieces become the ones you miss when they are in the washing machine, the first ones packed in your vacation suitcase.

So: we’ve stopped looking at price solely based on the label, and instead focused on its objective qualities: the quality of its craftsmanship, the beauty of the fabric… but, as you can see where I’m going with this, also on other "ingredients" much less easy to test in a laboratory: because at the heart of our brand project is emotional attachment!

Re-wearing because we love it...

...and not just because it's good quality.
Because we're talking about fashion, not a fully-optioned station wagon; incidentally, I don't own a car.
So why do we love it? I won't venture to add my theory where the greatest writers have offered explanations, but I can tell you about the extra soul that infuses our creative studio.
In Patine's personal formula, there are memories from the 80s and 90s, captured or not in my photo albums, magazine clippings, and mental screenshots in the ultra-absorbent Spontex sponge I have in my brain; my head looks like a large chest of drawers cluttered with balance sheets, verses, love letters, lawsuits, romances.
They are then found in a fabric texture, in the Lime color of the Willie T-shirt, in the curve of a sleeve, or in the wash of a pair of jeans.

There are years of IRL testing of clothes I've loved for a long time, which I re-adapt by making them eco-friendly and timeless, like the new Skort inspired by a vintage piece I've faithfully worn for 15 years, but which we've transformed into a skirt to have endlessly long legs like in 90s photos of Kate Moss, Christie Turlington, and Nami Campbell in Versace.

There are your thousands of messages on Instagram, by email, and on the WhatsApp group; there are your answers to questionnaires for future clothing, your reviews submitted several weeks after you started wearing an item, which allow us to constantly improve.

There's that 15th prototype of the perfect tank top that we remake again because "I feel like the armhole should open up just a tiny bit more there, you see, by 5 millimeters, to suggest but not show, like Winona in Reality Bites, remember?"

In short, the clothes in the Patine wardrobe are as much made of material as they are of intentions, taste, and research, which, I cross my fingers, makes them all the more endearing. This makes you want to wear them for a long time. And ultimately reduces their Cost Per Wear. The loop is almost closed.

Very low Cost Per Wear for the Skort launched this summer, inspired by vintage shorts found in Texas 15 years ago, which I'll wear again this winter with sheer tights and boots, as seen here.

Development of Party Wear pieces in pattern fabric, designed to be easily re-worn during the day, imagined with Alice Rio Derrey.

Re-wearing because we love ourselves...

Well, did I forget something in this Cost Per Wear formula? Meaning, of course. Because in the price, there is what you pay, yes, but that would be a very egocentric view of life that we want to move away from immediately!

You know the saying: if it's cheap, it's probably because others are paying the price: what are the working conditions of those who grow the cotton? Those who cut? Those who sew? How many resources have we "stolen" from nature to make this piece? What is fashion's impact on the fragile balance of biodiversity? A price must be increased when the cost of energy increases, even when we maximize partners who use solar panels. When the minimum wage increases in Portugal for a better quality of life for its population, this must also be factored in, and we must not flee to a factory that is less respectful of its employees.

So here we are: 9 years of refining our formula beyond a price tag. Another anniversary for a year of "slow" fashion spent at TGV speed #choosethetrain. You've been warned: this is only the beginning of the beginning. We are so far from perfection; we remain a young and fragile company in a merciless world, and we still have hundreds of dreams to realize... In the price to pay, sometimes there's our own fatigue: fortunately, it's quickly overcome by the passion that has driven the Patine team from day one and the excitement of launching new projects.

Ah… one last secret ingredient that lightens the price to pay for growing Patine? It's optimism! And you need it when the only solution currently offered to curb heatwaves and fires is to air-condition France like a mall in the USA. When I was little, they made me dream, but I always found them too cold :)