About Antumbra — Lisbon / Copenhagen, since 2016
We make clothesfor the edgeof the light.
(01) — Story
Antumbra began as a two-person pattern studio, cutting coats for other people’s labels. In 2016 we started keeping the patterns we loved most. Ten years later they are still the spine of everything we make.
The name comes from astronomy. An antumbra is the region beyond a shadow’s core, where the light source still shows as a bright ring. It is the part of an eclipse you can stand in — not darkness, but light made strange.
That is what we look for in a garment: a line that changes as the light moves, a fabric that is never the same colour twice in a day. We design for the body walking home at the end of the afternoon.
(02) — Philosophy
Nothing we make is finished until someone has worn it in.
(03) — How we work
- 01
Materials
Double-faced wool from Biella, silk charmeuse from Como, calf leather tanned with tree bark in Tuscany. We buy whole bolts from five mills we visit every year, and we name every one of them.
- 02
Craftsmanship
A Long Shadow Trench takes thirty-one hours and passes through nine pairs of hands. Edges are closed by hand, buttonholes are cut after fitting, and every piece is signed by the cutter who began it.
- 03
Design process
We begin outdoors, photographing how fabric behaves in raking light, then drape on the stand before a single line is drawn. Patterns are cut flat only once the cloth has told us how it wants to fall.
- 04
Sustainability
One chapter a year, never seasons. Small runs made close to order, no end-of-season burning, deadstock offered to students. Every piece can come home for repair for as long as it is worn.
Fittings at the Marvila atelier, Chapter VII.
(04) — Ten years
Seven chapters,one long afternoon.
2016
A pattern studio in Marvila
Two cutters, one table and a rented room above a cork warehouse in eastern Lisbon. Chapter I is eleven coats.
2018
First Light
Chapter II is shown at dawn in an empty municipal pool. Forty guests, no music, one long shadow per look.
2020
The tannery atelier
The studio moves into a former tannery. Every Antumbra garment has been cut and finished there since.
2022
Repairs for life
A lifetime repair service launches. More than 1,900 pieces have come back to the atelier to be mended, not replaced.
2024
Copenhagen
A second studio opens on Bredgade for knit and leather development, closer to the mills we work with.
2026
Chapter VII — Low Sun
Our first fully traceable collection: every fibre, tannery and trim named, from field to finished seam.
(05) — Approach
“We would rather make one coat you keep for twenty years than twenty you forget.”