I only wanted to make jewellery.
That was the whole plan, back in the middle of May 2025. One piece — the cuff — cast properly in silver, and that would be it. I’d made clothes before, in another life, and I’d told myself I was done with them. Fabric, fittings, the whole slow argument of it. Jewellery felt clean by comparison. One object, made well, no seasons, nothing to prove.
Then I thought I’d do a couple of shirts. Nothing serious — two, maybe three tees, the kind of thing you make so there’s something to wear while the real piece arrives. Supporter pieces. That’s honestly how I filed them in my head: not fashion, just merch, a small favour to the launch.
And then I was standing at the print table.
I don’t know how to explain what a screen print does to you if you’ve never pulled one. The screen, the ink, the weight of the squeegee — one clean stroke, and there it is. The smell of it. The small drama of peeling the screen back and finding the thing sitting there on the cotton, exactly as sharp as you hoped or not at all. I’d forgotten. Or I’d made myself forget, which isn’t the same.
I kept pulling prints I didn’t strictly need, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth I gave up pretending. I missed this. Not the industry, not the seasons, not any of the parts I’d walked away from — just the making. The stupid, physical fun of it.
So the two or three tees became more than two or three. The supporter pieces stopped supporting anything and became the point. And OREN, which was supposed to be a jewellery project with a bit of merch bolted on, quietly turned back into the thing I actually do.
I make clothes again. That’s the short version. The long version is this whole shop.
Turns out you can’t file the thing you love under ‘just merch’ and expect it to stay there.
