SURMEE - An ode to family!
Our parents — Suresh and Meena — ran a business in India. They named it using the initials of their children, woven quietly into the company name, in every letterhead, every invoice, every ordinary day. A business that carried the family forward, literally, in its name.
Surmee is our answer to that gesture.
SUResh + MEEna : SURMEE
WHAT WE BELIEVE
We believe that craft is the most honest form of human expression So when you choose a handcrafted piece over a manufactured one, you are sustaining a practice. You are putting your money into the hands of someone whose family has been doing this for generations — and making it possible for the next generation to continue.
We believe that art unites. A block print from Rajasthan and a ceramic from Cappadocia and a textile from regional Australia can sit in the same room, on the same shelf, and make perfect sense together. Because craft speaks a language that geography has never successfully contained. A love of colour. A recognition of skill. The particular pleasure of holding something made by a human hand and knowing it immediately. These are not small things. They are, in fact, the most important things.
WHAT WE DO
We go out and look for apparel, accessories, stationery, homewares, art and objects from artisan makers and small businesses in India, UK, Turkey and Australia — makers whose craft has been handed down through generations and is now being reimagined by the next. Each season, one technique becomes our focus. We learn it, photograph it, write about it, and find the makers who have devoted their lives to it. Their work comes to Sydney. Their story comes with it.
THE CONSIDERED LIFE
There is a Hindi word — aaramse — that roughly translates as: with ease, without hurry. It describes a way of doing things that has largely disappeared from the world of commerce. Not from laziness, but from a belief that things done well cannot be rushed. The block printer who soaks his blocks overnight. The weaver who checks the tension of every thread. The dyer who mixes fresh each morning because yesterday's batch is already changed. These are not inefficiencies. They are the marks of someone who cares about the outcome more than the speed. We built Surmee around the same belief. We are surrounded by a world of polyester and fast fashion — fibres that do not breathe, dyes that leach into the water table, garments designed to be worn a handful of times and discarded. We think there is a different way. Natural fabrics that soften with age. Natural dyes that shift and deepen over years of washing. Objects that develop a patina. Things that reward the decision to buy slowly, to buy once, to keep well.
Surmee. Named for where we come from.
Made for where we are.