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Q&A with Alina, Head of Product.
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In short, Alina Reitz is the bee’s knees. Starting at D&D in 2017, Alina has set the tone for our relationship with our suppliers, spending probably as much time designing their Christmas presents as she does our new season's range. She has led our sustainability and product inclusion and diversification journey. Alina is full of surprises and her brain works in a seriously magical way. She is logical, practical, and has a way of naturally putting everything into a sensible narrative the rest of us can understand. But she’s also creative! She studied weaving at Central Saint Martin’s, casually wrote and illustrated a children's book for her god-daughter. She also alters all her own clothes. In the studio she is the person you want to sit next to, calm and peaceful but believe me, you don’t want to go up against her. She has a very quiet, and very powerful strength!
Molly x
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Alina Reitz is the bee's knees.
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Alina! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do for D&D?
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My team and I look after all things ‘product.’ Bringing the designer’s visions to life through developing the samples, sourcing our manufacturing network, putting our PJs into production and optimising them based on customer feedback.
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What’s your favourite bit about the job?
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It’s very versatile and despite working with a lot of numbers and margins, it’s also an area of people, empathy and emotion! After all, we buy clothes to feel good in them. Another real perk is getting to be the customer— looking for things I want to buy and wear every day and doing that with some of the best people I know.
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We’ve got so many exciting product updates in the works. Could you tell me a bit about what’s going on on the sustainability front?
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All our printed cotton is GOTS certified and every other cotton we buy is either organic or BCI certified. 89% of the fabrics bought last year were organic, and we are looking to keep improving that. Our swing tags are now made from recycled cotton, and we’ve also eliminated all products of animal origin over the last 2 years—replacing suede slipper soles with an equally durable alcantara suede and switching from Mother of Pearl buttons to the even more hardwearing Corozo seed buttons.
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...and we've also eliminated all products of animal origin over the last 2 years.
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Our manufacturers are all audited either by GOTS, Sedex or BSCI to help ensure fantastic working conditions. Our main supplier goes above and beyond by not just paying more than many competitors, but also offering shuttle buses to drive workers home to have lunch with their families and offering monthly massage appointments with a physio. We know that sewing for many hours a day can lead to some aches and pains! We also visit every supplier we work with and—as small as it sounds—we need to walk out with a good feeling. Little things like noticing that the staff are actually all friends and a smile isn’t forced, all feeds into our overall impression. We all love coming to work, and they are part of our team.
We try to have a really agile production line with smaller reorders where possible rather than big upfront stock orders that need offloading. Sometimes we over-order or, even better, our factories are just more efficient in cutting, so we are working on ways to use up the old fabrics and trims or trading them in again. We don’t want to turn a blind eye to the fashion industry, and we know there is a long way to go in creating a truly circular system. What we are most excited by is creating more opportunities to support new research, techniques and voting with our buying power.
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You mention GOTS certification, what exactly does this mean?
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At the moment, we manufacture pretty much everything in Portugal. In order for us to guarantee the same standards on both the ethical and environmental level, we use the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) audits and certificates to ensure that wherever we source from, the standard is the same. GOTS works in line with the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to set a standard throughout the supply chain for ecological and labour conditions in textile and clothing manufacturing. Textiles have to be processed with the LEAST possible impact on the environment and with respect for labour conditions. They do this by using organic ways to farm that replenish the soil fertility and use no pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. They also set welfare standards for animal breeding and prohibit genetically modified organisms.
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...as well as extending our size range to truly cater to sizes 6-18 for now.
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In other product news. We’ve got some new sizing stuff in the works, could you tell me a bit about it?
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As D&D has grown, we are working through every PJ style to make sure it really caters to our customer’s needs. Our main value is that PJs have to be comfortable, so we are making some tweaks across some of those stress point measurements as well as extending our size range to truly cater to sizes 6-18 for now. We want to do this well, and are taking things step by step, with lots of wearer trials and waiting for customer feedback to ensure we actually got it right before jumping to the next silhouette. Starting with our best selling long sets, signature sets and short sleeve sets, we are working to test every single silhouette to be size inclusive, focusing on the comfort of the fit over a prescribed size. This is quite a big Ops challenge too, so as we transition over the next year we hope you can bear with us but also, please, send all the feedback you have! We really do listen and it’s gold dust to us.
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Lastly, what are your most treasured pair of D&D’s?
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My very first pair of Sansindo Tiger Long Sets, but the new linen nighties are starting to rival them now!
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Sunday Uniform Suggestions
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Desmond & Dempsey 30A Acre Lane London, Brixton SW2 5SG
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