It started with a single garment. A 90-year-old Henley unearthed at a Berlin flea market in 2011.

Fashion designers Gitta and Peter Plotnicki instantly recognized the Henley’s quality as unique and markedly rare. In fact, the impeccably preserved piece was an authentic workers shirt from 1911.

Tracing the Henley’s provenance led the pair to Germany’s Swabian Alps. Once a thriving hub of textile manufacturing, the region’s factories fell quiet decades ago with the twentieth-century race towards mass-production, automation and ubiquitousness. In Albstadt, Gitta and Peter met one of the area’s last textile manufacturers, Rudolf Loder, who invited the couple to see something special. In a disused factory, rows of towering, authentic loopwheelers stood gathering dust. With origins spanning from 1889 to the 1960s, the stunningly analogue circular knitting machines were Germany’s only surviving loop wheelers.

For Gitta and Peter, the Albstadt machines were captivating signposts of the past; unknown to the couple at the time, the machines would also guide their future. The thread tying everything together – past, present and future – was a brand called Merz b. Schwanen.

Founded in 1911 by Balthasar Merz, Merz b. Schwanen manufactured loopwheeled workers Henleys and underwear. The brand ceased operation in 2005. There in the sleepy Albstadt factory, the idea to revive the loop wheelers was born, and the seeds of a new business were planted.

In a fortuitous stitch of fate, Balthasar Merz's descendants learned of Gitta and Peter’s plans, and generously offered their old brand name 'Merz b. Schwanen’. The gesture imbued the new venture with over a century of company, regional and manufacturing history.