Lets talk buttons
‘A button isn’t a small thing, it’s the final decision in a garment’s creation and the one thing that will be touched, turned, and noticed every single day.’
This one has been sitting with me since the very beginning of the brand, and I want to talk about it properly. Not as a selling point or a credential but as the honest version of how I got here.
When I started The Petite Cartel, I came in knowing three things had to be non-negotiable: natural fibres, locally sourced materials, and a fit that genuinely works for petite bodies. Those were not targets to reach eventually but the bedrock of the brand from its inception. It was during the initial development stage that I arrived at the same stubborn problem: fastenings.
Most clothing (including clothing that makes a great deal of its organic credentials) is held together with plastic or metal zips, nylon thread, and metal press studs. The fabric might be on point, but close the zip, and you’re holding a piece of petroleum in your hand. If I was serious about natural fibres and traceability, I couldn’t simply overlook the trims that tied the garment together, which I felt would be transformative to the garment’s credentials as truly considered.
So from the beginning, I made the decision that I would design out plastic and metal fastenings entirely.
Would customers actually go for it?
I want to be honest here, because it was a genuine concern and one I sat with for a while. A tie takes a little more time than a zip, and a button requires a tiny bit more patience than a press stud. We live in a world that has optimised getting dressed for speed, and I wasn’t certain whether asking someone to slow down slightly would be a smart choice.
What I found whilst working through the design process was that the trims would have to be carefully considered elements of the design that didn’t compromise the silhouette and unfussy nature that embodies the brand but would have to be painstakingly sought and chosen to elevate the garment by becoming a complimentary part of the design. Fastenings shouldn’t just be functional but an aesthetic design choice made to contrast and complement through its weight, material, colour, and finish.
A well-placed tie on a petite frame does something a zip simply can’t: it adjusts to you - you decide the length, the tension, the silhouette, and this mattered to me, so I believe it matters to the person wearing it too.
Here are the two approaches across the collection I landed on:
01
ADJUSTABLE TIES
Long-length straps that can be tied to your own preference, adjusted, and worn differently depending on the day or style you prefer. On a petite frame, the proportions matter enormously - a tie placed thoughtfully can change the entire silhouette. These long-length ties offer a subtle bit of whimsical elegance without compromising on the structure or the unfussy design.
02
NATURAL FIBER BUTTONSSourced from two extraordinary UK makers. Each button is biodegradable or compostable, made with a craft heritage that stretches back generations. The styles I chose to sample with are made of material that will return to Earth as honest as it arrived - no plastic, no synthetics.
Finding the button makers
This part of the sourcing journey took longer than I expected. Natural buttons exist - corozo, horn, shell, etc., but finding them made in the UK by people I could actually speak to and build a real understanding with was an entirely different challenge. Instead of ordering from a faceless catalogue, knowing who I was working with and understanding their process was important to me, and what I eventually found were two businesses that ticked most of my boxes. I want to introduce them both properly, because I think they deserve the attention.
Courtney & Co
BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER, COTSWOLDS | COURNEYANDCO.UK
In December 2012, James Grove & Sons — Britain’s last horn button maker, established in 1857 — closed its doors after 155 years of trading. At its height, it had employed hundreds of people making buttons for world-famous Savile Row tailors, the armed forces, and fashion houses across the world. After ‘cash-flow’ issues, 2012 saw the sudden and devastating closure of this heritage British company, and James Grove & Sons were put into administration, spelling what could have been the final nail in the coffin for an industry long in decline since the 1970s. Britain had seen the steady and inevitable hollowing out of its domestic manufacturing industry as globalisation paved the way for sourcing cheaper products overseas - not even a prestigious and high-quality brand like JGS could withstand the changing winds. Adding to the changes in sourcing and supply chains, JGS also had an ageing population of craft workers at the time who had begun to retire, with nobody to pass on their specialist skills, which meant the very real existential threat to what little remained of the industry.
In June 2013, a small notice appeared in Country Life magazine. It described what had been lost and asked whether anyone could help save the last remaining machines, and it was then that Andrea and David Courtney (with no prior experience in the industry whatsoever) saved the last remaining machines.
A valiant effort would ensue during the years after JGS’s closure, in which they trained themselves from having had no prior knowledge, found a factory in the Cotswolds, and began producing products again by 2016 - a remarkable thing to have achieved.
Today, Courtney & Co are the sole manufacturer of natural material buttons in the UK. They make three types: corozo, from the tagua palm nut which falls naturally from rainforest floors in Ecuador; Codelite®, made from 96% dairy milk protein - a material first developed in Stroud in 1909, then lost for 45 years, and revived by Courtney & Co in 2018 - and real horn from water buffalo and ox, a by-product of farming. Every button is turned, dyed, and finished in-house in the Cotswolds, polished in rotating barrels for up to four days using wooden pegs, maize husks, and walnut shells, and their dyes are Oeko-Tex Standard 100 and AZO-free certified.
What I value most about working with them (beyond the extraordinary quality of the materials themselves) is how openly they share the whole process. They can tell you where the raw material came from, how it was handled, and what every stage of production involves. Their corozo is sourced through the Forever Lung initiative, which works to preserve the Ecuadorian rainforests where the tagua palm grows. The nut falls naturally when ripe rather then being cut, nothing forced and a single tree can keep producing for over a century.
That level of openness is precisely what traceability means in practice. The ability to follow a single thread from a nut that fell in Ecuador, to a barrel in the Cotswolds, to a garment made in London is a chain I am genuinely proud to be part of.
Charles Singleton
SHEFFIELD, SOUTH YORKSHIRE | CHARLES-SINGLETON.CO.UK
Charles Singleton is a warm and friendly family-run business that has stayed in the same hands for over 80 years. They’ve been manufacturing with mother-of-pearl and shell in Sheffield since the 1940s and have been quietly supplying some of the UK’s most prestigious clothing makers across successive generations. I say quietly because during my research, they were hard to track down, unlike the now widely recognised Courtney & Co, and they’re even harder to find more information about on the web.
In the dying landscape of domestic manufacturing in Britain, this remarkable family business started by making mother-of-pearl handles for the once booming cutlery industry in post-war England. Later on in the 1960s, when the industry was in decline, Charles Singleton shrewdly pivoted the business from handles to buttons, a valiant act that would prove to protect their workforce. Today, the company remains in the same family, and they have expanded their repertoire to include other shells and some man-made options. Every button is meticulously turned, checked, and colour-matched in Sheffield before it leaves their workshop, and their specialism is different to the natural button world of Courtney & Co, making the finished results beautiful in a completely different way. They work predominantly with unprotected shell species harvested from locations within the Pacific Basin, which they describe as having stringent safeguards to protect and conserve the shells and the people harvesting them. This beautiful material is unique by nature because no two pieces of shell are identical, so no two buttons are either; instead, each one carries its own depth of colour and markings. A celebration of the imperfect perfection of nature herself.
I want to be straightforward about where I am with Charles Singleton, because transparency is central to this brand and that has to include my own sourcing story. I am currently in the early stages of a working relationship with them at the sampling phase on selected garments. They have been kind to me and are brilliant to work with on a practical level: collaborative, responsive, and willing to work to small minimum orders, which is not something every maker will do. The materials are genuinely natural, everything is done in-house and the quality is outstanding.
The full traceability conversation is something I am still building with them over time. They are a little less forthcoming on the sourcing details than Courtney & Co, and I want to be honest that this is an ongoing dialogue rather than a closed question. I am approaching it as the beginning of a relationship (which is the right way to approach it) and I will keep that conversation open as we continue to work together in the hope that I can build a level of trust that will allow me to see further into their process.
The ethics of not having all the answers yet
I want to address this directly, because I think it is one of the most important and least comfortable conversations in sustainable fashion right now.
I can’t tell you that every single element of everything I make is fully traceable to its point of origin and I don’t think many small brands can with complete certainty. The corozo nut that becomes a Courtney & Co button was grown in Ecuador. The shell in a Charles Singleton button came from somewhere in the natural world before it arrived in Sheffield.
When I was starting out, I had a choice: wait until I had perfect knowledge, or commit to the best available decision with full transparency about what I knew and what I did not, and I chose the latter. I think that choice made consciously, with eyes open, is actually more ethical than a brand that claims a certainty it doesn’t possess.s number 4
“Being at the helm of your supply chain doesn’t mean having a perfect story from day one. It means knowing where the responsibility sits, accepting it, and committing to keep asking the questions - even when the answers are still developing and asking questions is sometimes hard.”
What I can say with certainty is this: every fastening on every Petite Cartel garment comes from a named UK maker. I know their name, their address, their materials, and much of their process, and I’ve chosen them because of those things. That is a fundamentally different approach to a button than clicking ‘add to basket’ on an anonymous supplier platform, and that difference matters.
Supporting local trade and British craft
The button-making industry in Britain has been contracting for decades. Courtney & Co exists because two people decided that this industry was worth saving, and they did something about it. Charles Singleton has maintained a Sheffield factory through generations of industrial change. When I buy from them, I’m not making a minor purchasing decision; I am actively participating in whether those crafts continue, and so are you.
This is what supporting British craft actually looks like in practice, and choosing to work with them is the difference between supporting a great British manufacturing tradition and helping to keep them going. It’s not a swing tag claim or a marketing gimmick.
For a petite brand made in London, sourcing buttons from the Cotswolds and Sheffield feels right in a way that’s difficult to fully articulate but very easy to feel, and I’m proud that it means more elements of each article come together as a finished piece right here on this island.
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