(Continued) weekend, Seely has always been a man of style. But in his quest to align his fashion sense with his artistic lifestyle and persona, he found that there was a huge void in men's fashion when it came to adding accessories to his clothes. "I always have loved pocket squares." Explains Seely. "But as I would shop for them and try to find unique pieces to pair with my suit jackets, I realized that there just wasn't a lot of pocket squares that were made out of top-quality fabrics with high-end tailoring... So eventually, I just had to start making my own." And that he did.
Seely first started when he was teaching overseas in Japan. He noticed that locals would throw away beautiful Kimonos after wearing them just a few times. So he would collected them up and turn them into scrap fabric that would then be used to make pocket squares. "I had zero experience in sewing," he recalls, "So I turned to a friend of a friend who had a masters in fabric design. She was also a local Burlesque dancer with exemplary sewing skills... so I hired her to help me and the brand was born. I initially started selling them online on Etsy, and then a short while later in exclusive high end boutiques, and it pretty much grew from there." He recalls. As his venture began to grow, he started sourcing rare and exotic fabrics from all over the world. He eventually settled on one of his favorite types of fabrics, raw organic silk, that was harvested by forest dwellers in India.
This Indian raw silk is harvested in the wild, not on a large commercial silk farm. This means that the silk moths are able to chew their way out of their own cocoons and fly away and live in the wild. After they have gone, the cocoons are harvested and the silk strands are then collected and sent off to be made into fabric. No part of the moth's life cycle is harmed making the use of this type of fabric environmentally friendly and completely sustainable.
It is this attention to detail in his fabric selection that Seely feels really sets his pocket squares apart from the rest. Not only are his fabrics environmentally friendly, but the overall feel and quality is just better. "Normal silk has a bit of sheen to it and sometimes can look nice." He explains. "But one thing that I learned about when I was researching pocket squares is that most of them are made out of cheap fabrics and the patterns or designs are merely printed onto the fabric. These squares tend to look cheap and they don't have a lot of personality to them. I make my squares out of wild silk, which not only has deep beautiful color hues, but also has a lot more texture and unique things going on with the fabric. I decided that if I truly wanted to make pocket squares that looked rich and luxurious, (Continued...)