ABOUT US

How Vomaire started — and why it's ending.

In 1993, I was working part-time at a clothing store in a small town in the South. Not because I dreamed of fashion — but because I had an eye for it. I could tell by the hem, by the weight of the fabric, whether something was made to last or made to sell.

Most of it was made to sell.

I watched women come back week after week — disappointed. A linen blouse that lost its shape after one wash. A jacket that started pulling at the seams before winter was over. They weren't buying cheap. They were buying blind. And there was nothing better to point them to.

One evening in February — my daughter was asleep, the house was quiet — I laid seven fabrics across my kitchen table. A heavy linen. A double-woven cotton. A wool blend I'd found through a small supplier I trusted. I wanted to see if I could put together something that would still look right after a full year of wearing it.

Those seven fabrics became my first collection.

I sold five pieces to friends. Kept two for myself. There was no website, no logo, no business plan. Just a name — Vomaire — and a belief that if something is made well, it doesn't need marketing.

The early years were not glamorous. I worked days at the store and evenings on my own sourcing. My savings were thin. When a supplier went under in 1997 and I lost an order worth thousands, I had to stop for three months. That was the moment I decided never to depend on a single source again.

That decision shaped everything.

I slowly built a network of small, reliable producers — in Portugal, Italy, and later Morocco. No large factories. Workshop by workshop, fabric by fabric. Every piece that carried the Vomaire name had passed through my hands first.

Over the years, the brand grew the only way I wanted it to: quietly. No influencer deals. No paid campaigns. Just women who told other women about a jacket that still looked good after five years, or a linen set that got softer with every wash instead of worse.

More than 60,000 women have worn something from Vomaire. That number still means everything to me.

But honesty has a cost.

Over the past few years, production costs have more than doubled. Materials, energy, shipping — everything went up. At the same time, fast fashion flooded the market with pieces that look like quality but aren't. Women compare prices — understandably — and I can't compete with brands that produce without my standards.

I could have cut corners. Cheaper fabrics. Bigger runs. Less control. But then Vomaire wouldn't be Vomaire anymore.

So I made a decision.

This is the final collection. Everything you see is everything that's left. Once a piece sells out, it won't be remade. No restock. No return.

I'm not closing with regret. I'm closing with 30 years of gratitude — for every woman who bought something of mine, wore it, and passed it on. That's exactly what I started this for.

— Elisabeth