There is a room above the Ikoyi boutique that most customers never see. It is quieter than the shop below, and warmer, and it smells faintly of steam. Six women work here. Between them they have close to a hundred years of practice, and they can tell the weight of a fabric by the sound it makes when it falls.
This is where the VR label is made. Not the whole of it, and not always, but the pieces that matter most: the boubous, the pleats, the sets that leave the building in a garment bag with somebody’s name pinned to it.
It starts with the fall
Organza is a difficult fabric to love. It is sheer, it creases if you look at it, and it will not forgive a bad seam. It is also the only thing that moves the way a boubou needs to move, which is to say that it should follow you a half-second late, and settle after you have already stopped.
You cannot rush organza. It will tell you, immediately, that you have rushed it.
Then the marigolds
The embroidery is drawn before it is stitched, then worked by hand over the better part of two days for a single front panel. The marigolds on the emerald boubou are not identical, and they are not meant to be.
Small numbers, on purpose
A VR release is rarely more than a few dozen pieces per colourway. That is simply how many six pairs of hands can make properly in a season. When a colour is gone, it is usually gone.
