Feature: Where Is Damson Madder From?
Damson Madder is from London. It's a British label, run by a small, female-led team in North London, and it's been going since spring 2020. The clothes are designed there and made by the brand's factory partners in Turkey, China and India. We've stocked it since 2024.
Who founded Damson Madder?
Emma Hill, who'd spent years working in the fashion industry before she started it. She's said she became disillusioned with what went on behind the scenes, the mass production and the waste especially, and wanted to make something slower without making it dull.
The first collection took around eighteen months to put together and went on sale just as the country went into its first lockdown. She's since said nobody was looking at it at all. It picked up anyway, mostly on the strength of how the clothes look: puffed sleeves, oversized collars, bows, and a lot of leopard print and check, sometimes on the same piece. A pair of leopard-print cargo trousers went viral and did more than anything to get the label noticed, with 45,000 people signed up to hear about them at one point.
Why is it called Damson Madder?
Both words are colours. In the early days the team was trialling natural dyes on organic and recycled fabric, and two of the shades that stuck were damson, a deep plum, and madder, a red. Madder is a plant, and its roots have been used to dye cloth red for centuries.
How does Damson Madder fit?
Smaller than you might expect. Damson Madder's own advice is to order your usual size for most pieces, and its size guide gives body measurements rather than the measurements of each garment. Our experience is a bit different. The view across our team is that the sizing comes up small, and the dresses in particular aren't cut generously.
It catches people out because the dresses look roomy. The gathering and shirring add volume to the fabric without adding room through the body, so a dress can look full in a photo and still sit close on you. If you're between sizes, we'd take the larger one.
Jeans are their own thing. The brand says its denim should feel snug when it's new and will give as you wear it, and each pair has its own size chart. Measure a pair you already own that fits well and check it against that chart before you order.
What to wear with Damson Madder
Emma Hill has said she'd wear trainers with every outfit if she could get away with it, and that's how we'd wear most of this. A frilled blouse with baggy trousers. A printed midi dress with a plain grey sweatshirt over the top and something chunky from our footwear. The prints are meant to clash, and pink with green is one of her favourite pairings, so there's no need to match anything.
Everything we have in is in our Damson Madder collection. The brand also sells directly, so the two ranges won't always match. If you're weighing up the sustainability side, we've set out what the brand says about how its clothes are made in is Damson Madder sustainable?
