Why Brocade Belongs in the Daytime (as well)

Brocade has a reputation problem. Somewhere between the Elizabethan court and the contemporary occasion-wear section, it was decided that brocade was for evenings. For weddings and galas and events at which one is required to appear in one's finest. For the kind of dressing that happens twice a year, is photographed, and is then hung carefully in a wardrobe until the next occasion demands it.

This is a waste of a magnificent fabric.

Brocade is woven with raised patterns — florals, geometrics, abstracts — in a way that gives the cloth a depth and lustre that no other fabric quite achieves. It catches light differently at different angles. It has a weight and a structure that holds its shape through a long day without creasing, without sagging, without losing anything of its presence. It’s modern, it's magnificent and it’s made for making coats out of.

What’s more, at four in the afternoon it looks exactly as it looked at nine in the morning. That last quality alone should make it the obvious choice for daywear. Brocade does not crumple on a train or collapse in a meeting or lose its shape after three hours at a desk. It is, in the most practical sense, armour: beautiful, structured and entirely unbothered by the demands of a working day. A well-cut brocade coat is one of the most hardworking garments a woman can own — and one of the most beautiful.

At EdNerat, we use brocade for daywear coats. Coats for women who have somewhere to be rather than somewhere to be seen. Coats that go from a morning meeting to an afternoon gallery to an evening dinner without requiring a change of clothes or a moment's anxiety about how they are holding up. Coats that are entirely handmade in London, in sizes 6 to 20, with bespoke sizing available as a matter of course.

Our brocades are commission woven for us — and for clients who want to go further, we will commission weave for them individually: altering the pattern, adjusting the colour, changing the weight or composition to create something made for them and no one else. This is something we consider a natural extension of what we do: taking advantage of making in Britain and making clothing that is genuinely singular, for women who have no interest in wearing what everyone else is wearing.

The patterns in our brocades range from restrained and geometric to florid and painterly — some read as almost abstract from a distance and reveal their intricacy up close. This is entirely deliberate. We are as interested in how a coat reads across a room as in how it rewards close attention. Both matter. Both are part of what a well-chosen fabric does.

The fashion industry codes brocade as special occasion because occasion dressing is easier to sell. It creates a category of clothing that exists outside ordinary life — that requires justification, event, expenditure and a specific diary entry before it can be worn. We are not interested in clothing that requires justification. We are interested in clothing that earns its place in a wardrobe by being worn, frequently and happily, in the actual conditions of a real life.

Brocade, used well, is among the most practical and most beautiful fabrics a woman can wear. It is time it came out of the evening and into the day where it belongs.