Our Story

Each SuKaz jacket, created by Designer Susan Hollingsworth, is the product of 20 years living in international locales. A labour of love between designer, textile artisan, and seamstress; the wearable art pieces serve as tangible reminders of cultural craft passed down through generations. Telling a unique story, threads of ancient traditions are interwoven with flashes of contemporary elegance.

Our process:

Each jacket is a labor of love between designer, fiber artist and seamstress; a reflection of countless hours spent haunting markets and bazaars from Africa to the Middle and Far East, points along the Silk Road of Central Asia, and the mother lode, the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. The fiber art panel in each jacket is original, showcasing needle art techniques including embroidery, fabric origami, needle felting, ribbon work and appliqué. An individual panel can take up to 50 hours start to finish, not including the intensive training process each artisan undertakes to learn basic techniques.

Buttons are often hand-crafted, tatted, kiln-forged (metal) or kiln-fired (glass), and the fabrics themselves might be embroidered, manipulated through smocking and folding, or hand woven on wooden looms. Crafted to the finest detail, SuKaz jackets are one-of-a-kind works of art.

Five things to know:

(1) Responsible fashion: Each SuKaz Jacket is responsibly manufactured, so the wearer of a SuKaz piece can cosy up with pride knowing that the journey their jacket has taken is one of care.

(2) One of a kind: This is where we get all cryptic and mysterious. Go ahead, guess how many of each jacket we make.

(3) The art panel: Each jacket tells a story, and a selection of the jackets have a hidden panel. In addition to the silk interior of each piece the fibre art panel in each jacket is original, showcasing needle art techniques including embroidery, fabric origami, needle felting, ribbon work and appliqué.

(4) Travel & culture: Travel and culture is at the heart of SuKaz. Each wearable art piece serves as a tangible reminder of cultural craft passed down through generations. The brand was born during the designer, Susan’s time living in Kazakhstan, and was first inspired by Kazakh freestyle embroidery. Su-Kaz, get it?

(5) Community: The SuKaz customer looks beyond passing trends and instead prefers to focus on how a piece makes them feel. From ballet dancers in Clear Lake, models in Brooklyn to authors in London we love our SuKaz community. A community of design appreciating independent individuals that make up #teamsukaz. 

A note on sizing:

The way each jacket has been designed makes them suitable for various dress sizes and body shapes. Tiffany is on hand to advise on specific pieces and so will talk to you to find out, based on what you need your SuKaz piece to be, which is the piece for you to make you feel great wearing it.