PEOPLE FIRST is a small design house, founded in 2022 by Ivan and Sonya Suprun — a brother and a sister, working between an atelier in the Baltics and a quiet office full of forgotten Italian cloth. We make signature-cut shirts, outerwear and stable basics, in limited numbered runs.
For over fifteen years, Ivan worked at the heart of the fashion industry — its fast pace, its complex layers, the noise that often hides the person behind the garment. Then came the turning point. Together with his sister Sonya, they decided to do something different.
They chose to strip away the industry’s excess and return to the soul of the craft. The birth of PEOPLE FIRST is our commitment to the slow and the steady. We went backward to move forward.
In a world obsessed with making things faster and cheaper, we chose to make them slower, better, and more human.
People are at the center of everything that we do. The makers come before the season, before the line sheet, before the press kit.
We support local artisans and their labour by following real making costs — not the reduced ones of massive production.
We hunt for high-end deadstock — Italy’s finest forgotten textiles. Once a fabric is gone, it is gone forever.
Stable basics are the only true timeless luxury. Five pieces, fully prepared for any occasion. Understandable. Honest.
A deadstock bolt — sometimes only forty metres — left behind by a great fashion house. We do not commission new fibre.
Patterns are drawn beside the cloth. The grain is continuous from shoulder to hem. Nothing rushed.
Eight makers around a long table. Seams bound by hand. Hot iron, mild patience.
A textured card of authenticity. A number sewn into the hem. A small list, kept in a drawer.
We are a small one. We use cloth that already exists. We make limited runs. We mend what we have sewn. This is not a programme. It is a smaller way of working — and we think the word sustainable belongs to the people who do this at scale, not to a small house in the Baltics.
We will tell you what we do, in plain numbers, in the journal. We will not tell you that buying a shirt saves the world. It will not. It will keep you well, and it will outlast a few winters, and it will return to us when it tires.