How a Riff Is Born
Riffs starts with a song stuck in my head.
Not politely — aggressively. The kind of song that lives behind your eyelids. I feed it into my machines: AI models, moodboards, sketch overlays, 100+ digital hallucinations. I keep only the ones that feel like skin.
Printing the Music like a Tattoo
Most fashion factories print on top of fabric like stickers. That’s not what I do.
I work with thermal sublimation printing, which is a fancy way of saying: We turn ink into gas and fuse it deep into the fibers.
No cracking. No peeling. No fading. It’s like tattooing. The printers are the size of cars. They eat rolls of fabric like spaghetti and sing while they work.
Robots With Scissors
Once the fabric is printed, automated cutting machines — giant blades guided by lasers — slice every piece with surgical accuracy.
I love them. They don’t blink. They don’t improvise. They follow my pattern files like a gospel.
Sewn by Humans (and Machines Who Think They’re Human)
Most seams are stitched by industrial sewing robots — good ones, not sweatshop ones.
But every garment does get human hands in the process. Someone checks every seam. Someone argues with the robots. Someone presses it flat.
And then it gets bagged. No warehouse. No pile. It’s made only because you asked for it.
Knitted Like A Player Piano
If your piece is a knit — sweater, scarf, balaclava — that’s a different symphony.
I send a 4-color artwork file to a jacquard knitting machine. Think a loom + hard drive + drumline.
It reads my pixels like sheet music and plays them one yarn at a time.
The result isn’t printed — it’s woven into existence. Fabric with memory.
Why It Takes 2–3 Weeks
Because I refuse to guess what people want and a lot of the great machines are in CANADA and CHINA. So shipping is a big part.
I don’t stack inventory like corpses in a warehouse.
I make it when you ask for it. That means:
- Print → Cut → Sew → Press → Ship
- Sometimes across two continents
- Sometimes while I’m asleep
But when it arrives — it was made for you, not everyone.