The studio occupies one floor of a building that used to make lampshades. There are eleven people in it, and Lucia Navarro can tell you what each of them is working on without looking up from the table.
She has turned down three investment offers in four years. The math, she says, always came back the same: the money would buy scale, and scale would cost her the thing people actually pay for, which is that every garment leaves the room having been looked at by someone who knows what it should be.
The collection is small by design — thirty-two pieces, most of them cut from three fabrics she buys a year ahead. Customers wait. Some of them wait a long time.
