Design and development
Four people who choose the fabric, draft the patterns, run the fittings and write the fit notes you read on each product page.
About us
We make a small number of things, carefully
Founded in 2021 by two friends who were tired of choosing between comfortable and put-together. Small-batch collections, released seasonally.
How this started
Hollis & Hem began in 2021, in a spare room, with a spreadsheet of everything two friends could not find: a wrap dress that stayed closed, trousers with real pockets, a white shirt that was not see-through under office lighting. We had both spent years buying clothes that looked right in a photograph and felt wrong by 3pm.
So we made the list into a plan. We would design a small run each season, sell it, listen to what came back, and make the next run better. No flash sales, no fifty new styles a month, no pretending a garment is something it is not.
Five years on, that is still how it works. The collection is deliberately small — around thirty styles at a time — because a small collection is one we can actually stand behind.
What we are trying to do
Three promises we can keep
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Describe things accurately
Every product page lists the fiber content, the care instructions, the measurements and how the piece actually fits — including when it runs large or small. If a fabric wrinkles, we say so.
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Price without games
One price, shown in US dollars, excluding sales tax, which is calculated at checkout. No invented original prices, no permanent “sale”, no artificial deadline timers, no fees that appear at the last step.
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Make returns boring
30 days, unworn with tags, refunded to the original payment method in 5–10 business days after we receive your return. No restocking fee, no argument.
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Answer quickly
A real person replies within 1 business day, Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM ET. You can email or call — both reach the same small team.
How a piece gets made
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1. We start with a gap
Every style begins as a specific complaint — from us, from customer emails, or from a return reason. If we cannot name the problem a piece solves, we do not make it.
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2. Fabric before shape
We choose cloth first, because the cloth decides how a garment ages. We order small lengths, wash them five times, and look at what happened before committing to a run.
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3. Three fittings, real bodies
Samples are fitted on people of different heights and sizes, not on a single fit model. Grading notes from those sessions become the fit note printed on each product page.
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4. A small first run
First production is intentionally short. If the fit notes turn out to be wrong, we would rather find out across a few hundred pieces than a few thousand.
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5. Checked, then packed
Every garment is inspected before it is packed: seams, buttons, hems, and the label. Anything with a fault is pulled rather than discounted and shipped.
Sourcing and responsibility
We are a small company, so we will be precise about what we can and cannot claim.
- What we know. We work with a small number of manufacturing partners and we know which factory makes which style. Fiber content on every product page is taken from the mill's specification.
- What we do. Collections are produced in short runs to limit unsold inventory. Packaging is recyclable paper and cardboard, and orders ship without plastic polybags wherever the garment allows it.
- What we do not claim. We do not describe ourselves as sustainable, carbon neutral, or ethically certified, because we do not hold the third-party certifications that would make those words meaningful.
The team
Who you are actually emailing
We are a team of eleven across design, production and customer care. Rather than publishing staff photographs, we describe the roles — so you know who picks up your message.
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Production and quality
Three people who manage our manufacturing partners, inspect incoming runs, and decide what ships and what does not.
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Customer care
Four people answering support@hollisandhem.com and the phone line, within 1 business day.
About this storefront
This site is a complete, working demonstration build of a women's fashion store. It is honest about what it is:
- Payments are disabled. The checkout collects a shipping address and a payment method, then always returns a declined result. No card number, expiry date or security code is ever requested.
- Nothing is transmitted. No form on this site sends data anywhere. There is no server, no analytics, no tracking pixel and no third-party script beyond the web font.
- The catalog is sample content. Product names, descriptions, fabrics and measurements were written for this template, and the photography is licensed stock imagery credited in the project's image credits file.
- The business details belong to a fictional company. Hollis & Hem LLC at 412 Foundry Lane, Suite 210, Portland, OR 97209 is an invented business. The phone number uses the 555-01xx range reserved for fictional use, and hollisandhem.com was an unregistered domain when this site was built, so neither the number nor the email addresses reach anyone.
Before this site is used to sell or advertise anything, the owner must replace the catalog, photography, business name, address and contact details with real, verifiable information.