Hello

Hi. An introduction. My name is Emily

and this is Filly.

Filly started kinda accidentally. I had dropped out of law school and was working as a bicycle messenger in my home town of Santa Cruz, California. One afternoon I made a pair of overalls on my partner’s old Kenmore and they worked! They were cute, and wearable, and easy! .. and something clicked. I went back to school to study fashion at the California College of Arts and Crafts. My senior year I left school to start Filly.
Filly is a line of women’s clothing locally produced in small batch runs. I design a print for each season and use American-milled and sustainable fabrics whenever possible. The manufacturer and screenprinter are within 45  minutes of my home base in Santa Cruz. This is a one-woman company making good clothes for good women; clothes designed to be flattering to a wide variety of shapes and sizes, to be wearable and durable, to be odd in the good way.
But Filly is also something more. It is the way I feel when I am designing and pattern-making and sewing. I feel purposeful, sexy, peaceful. I like the way I move and pull the fabric. I like lifting and setting down and using tools and watching my hands move, without thought, around the sewing machine. I like the scratch of pencil in my workbook. I want women wearing Filly to feel the same. Comfortable in their own skin. Loving of their own skin.