HAMBURGERS, KNIT FACTORIES AND SKILLS THAT AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE IF I CAN HELP IT

When I was a young kid, probably around 10 years old, my favourite book was called The Perfect Hamburger — a story of a young boy who fought to save his favourite hamburger shop amidst the arrival of a massive hamburger chain in town. Maybe some of my passion for the little guy was inspired by that book, as I think of it often. Especially now I'm all grown up and find myself as the little guy, along with all our local Australian makers.

Many of you will remember a post I made a few months ago, letting you all know the devastating news that our local Melbourne knit factory was closing down. Run by a beautiful man called Mani, we'd been working with that factory to make all our knits since the start of Caves.

We were gutted to hear the news — gutted for Mani, and gutted because we knew his factory was one of the very last still making knits in Australia.

It feels like every week now I'm hearing stories of more and more little guys closing down. It's not just knit factories, but independent supermarkets, artisan bakeries and, startlingly, many, many clothing factories. It feels unjust and somehow 'anti-human'. It feels like the days in which we had allegiance to the same independent butcher or the same independent furniture maker are almost well and truly over.

This leads me to some good news, though, at last.

A few days after I announced the closure of our knit factory I received a DM from a guy called Chris. He was reaching out from his family-run knit factory in North Coburg. Literally 7 minutes from my house. I promptly paid him a visit. I was blown away by an incredible factory established in the 1970s. They agreed to make some of our knit samples and (to our excitement) are now moving onto production.

As such, I am thrilled to announce Caves will keep making knits starting with some Jonny Knits for this coming winter!

The necks of the Jonny Knits are still hand-linked — a skill that deserves its own post, which I'll no doubt write soon, but it's a painstaking, labour intensive technique, and the reason we can only make a limited run in time for the start of winter.

Limited pre-orders are now up online.