What Darong is

Darong started in 2017 with a single ribbed tank and a complaint that anyone who shops online will recognise: the medium fitted, the large bagged, and the colour you actually wanted had stopped at medium by Thursday. Nine years later the range runs to seventy-eight cuts, and the answer to that complaint is still the same one: everything is drafted on a single block.

A block is the pattern underneath the pattern: the shape of the shoulder, the depth of the armhole, the distance from shoulder to waist before a single style line is drawn on top. Draft each style separately and a size medium means one thing in a tank and something else in a long-sleeve knit. Draft them all on one and a size behaves the same way across the wardrobe. That is why fifty-five of our cuts run the whole XS-to-XL ladder in every colourway they come in, and why you can order a rib tank in black and a lounge set in coffee in the same size without thinking about it.

What runs through the range

A knit with spandex through it, mostly. Rayon and spandex on the lounge sets and the drapier tops, cotton and spandex on the ribs that hold a shape, polyamide on the pieces meant to move. The spandex is not there for stretch, because any knit stretches. It is there for recovery, which is the property that pulls a cuff back to its own width after you have pushed it up your arm.

Seventeen cuts are double-lined: two layers of the same knit rather than one, which is what keeps a pale tank from going transparent under daylight. Another seventeen carry a padded shelf bra sewn into the lining. Twenty-three have pockets deep enough for a phone. Those three numbers come straight out of the catalogue, and they agree across the site because of it.

What we can tell you about ourselves

The clothes are sewn to our patterns by manufacturing partners. The one checkable fact we state about ourselves is the year we started, 2017, and the rest of this site is about the clothes rather than about us.

How to use this site

Read the size guide before the shelves. Measure bust, waist and hip with a soft tape held level against the body, write the three numbers down, and every page here becomes a yes or a no instead of a guess. Then pick a neckline, then a shade, in that order, because the shade is the only one of the three that never costs you the fit.

The shelves themselves are the quickest way in: two-piece sets, tanks and camisoles, long-sleeve tops, sweaters and jackets, going-out tops, short-sleeve tees, bottoms and dresses.