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About us


OUR STORY

We founded Curator in 2005, motivated by our mutual love of clothing and working together. Our friendship has always inspired creative collaborations that pushed new ideas and missions forward. 

We met on a soccer field at 16 years old, where we discovered that we ran at the exact same pace—ahead of the pack. When we ended up picking the same college in San Diego, we grew even closer - living and “getting ready” together for over 10 years. Sharing a love of thrift store shopping and making things from our home - from photoshoots to silkscreening t-shirts - we produced a kindred understanding of clothing, and a love for working together.

While we were drawn to a lot of the same clothing, we noticed early on our bodies couldn’t be more different. Because of this, fit is one of our guiding principles behind all of the garments we make. We design our clothes to fit a wide range of bodies and when we make a piece that works on both of us, we know we’ve got something magical. We source hardworking fabrics and choose shapes that flatter. The goal of each Curator piece is to make you feel powerful and uninterrupted in your day. Clothes that are easy to wash, wear, and support all of your pursuits. Clothes that we want in our own closets. 

We created these pieces for the important days of your life, the ones where you want your best friend standing beside you. Just imagine two best friends trying and retrying on these pieces, debating the sleeves, the width, the ease of these garments to get the fit right. We hope our clothes become your favorite pieces to pull out of your closet and that you feel the joy that went into making them every time you wear them. 

xx

Deirdre Nagayama & Stacy Rodgers

 

OUR ETHICS

Curator is built around a 30 year friendship. We put our hearts and souls into each other and this work. This company reflects who we are and we strive to do the right thing in all stages of the business. From the sourcing of our fabric to who we work with to sew the final garments, every decision we make matters and we take that responsibility seriously. 

For the many risks of entrepreneurship, one of the very best rewards is the ability to work from our own ethics. We ask the hard questions of our suppliers. We do the research. We inquire about labor practices. We invest more to have our clothes made conscientiously both locally and at factories abroad. We employ communities we want to support. The judgement calls are ours to make. 

In an effort to give back to our community, we donate monthly to City of Dreams, an organization that is guided by a bold vision: to end the generational cycle of poverty in our city's most challenged neighborhoods. The same neighborhoods where we produce most of our garments. 

photos of garment workers

OUR FACTORIES

As SF natives, we proudly work with four factories in the Bay Area to produce our small batch goods. We ensure our partners pay fair wages and provide safe working conditions. The majority of our factories are family-run, more so even, women-run. Every one of these factories has an owner that works alongside their employees everyday. That’s a key component in selecting a factory for us. We proudly cut and sew our garments in California and currently make 90% of our line at factories that are within a 20 minute drive of our headquarters.  

As Covid has changed the world, so too has it changed the garment industry in the Bay Area. Workers are retiring and factories are closing. Our lead times for production have gone from a 4 week to a 10 week turn around time. This is partly why we are sold out of local production all the time! 

We have been monitoring these changes and have slowly begun to explore new supply chains with a work force that is not on the brink of retirement.  It’s important to note, we are not taking work away from ANY local factories. Our commitment remains to stay with them until they close. Our main factory, that sews our Jules Coats and Cadence Pants, closed in August 2024 and we worked with them until the end. It was a beautiful, cherished relationship we dearly miss.  Our other factory promises to give us 6 months notice of their retirement, they are planning to move in March 2025 so this gives us hope we will be able to collaborate for a few more years. These women are 65 + years old, and while it will be very sad to stop working with them, we want them to take care of themselves.

Braced with the reality that most of our factories will likely close in the next 2 years, we have been interviewing, researching and testing new factories. We are very happy to have partnered with a family run factory in Lima, Peru for our sweaters starting in 2022. We work with an agent native to Peru named Evelyn, whom we pay a living wage to supervise our projects and check in on conditions and quality control. We have visited the factory and broke bread with the factory owners. Over the last four seasons we have created a deep bond of respect with these partners. They deliver on time, high quality goods and answer all of our emails (we send a lot of emails!)  We are so grateful to our agent Evelyn for finding them and for the factories stellar working practices. We look forward to a long working relationship.

Spring 2023 brought a new factory into our fold from India. After talking to many of our colleagues in the industry, we selected a factory located in New Delhi, India run by two twin sisters.  The factory is SEDEX certified, and prices comparable to what we pay in SF to have these goods created. We ran tests, made samples and were able to place small orders for our Spring 2023 + Fall 2024 seasons.  As of now, we have put a pause on the India program to focus more on local production. Working overseas is super hard for commitment-phobes like us. We like to be nimble and change our minds midseason about colors — local production and garment dye work very well for this type of production.

Which leads us to our dye house - the one and only Dye Guy located in Novato. After using two previous dye houses that shuttered over the last 20 years we’ve found our home with the Dye Guy. A dream situation where a daughter has taken over the family business. Mary, a mother of two young children, is a hustler and hard worker we admire. It is not unusual for her to text us after hours, or give us the key to the shop to drop items when she’s not there. She is an expert in color and a problem solver extraordinaire.  She is exactly the kind of person you want to support in the supply chain where you buy your clothes. Small business personified.

 

OUR FABRICS

We partner with reputable mills who focus on ethical and sustainable practices. We use low impact dyes on all of our fabrics and products. And we wear-test our garments to make sure they hold up to your lives.  Before any fabric lands in your hands, it has gone through extensive testing. We’ve learned that fabric can be a lot like meeting a new friend -- you need to hang out with them several times before you know what they are made of. Their traits become especially clear in hot water and tight situations.