Each Holiday Season Swift Industries teams up with a local crafter to highlight their work. This year we’re introducing Telaio, a wool bicycle clothing company based right here in Seattle. Keep an eye on our site: we’re offering you a Limited Edition holiday treat that features Telaio, Swift Industries and more! 
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Katharine Andrews, founder, designer, and maker of Telaio Wool Bicycle Clothing, takes seriously the business of constructing utilitarian clothing with a decidedly dignified aesthetic. Her products, like her practice, have true integrity in all senses of the word: a wholeness that comes from translating personal experience (of being in the weather and the world, on and off a bicycle) into practical design; a soundness of quality that starts with fabric selection and continues with superior construction and attention to detail; an honesty that bends the whole endeavor towards deep consideration of usefulness and value in the lives of individuals. Katharine’s dedication to her craft has earned her the industry “It’s A Wrap!” award for excellence and creativity in design and the recognition of fine garment makers in the community. Telaio clothing is handbuilt in the historically industrial Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and has appeared on stage in the “Traffic Stoppers” show at the Seattle Bike Expo and San Francisco Bike Expo’s “Pedal Savvy” fashion show, in print in Momentum Magazine and Seattle’s City Arts Magazine, and is carried at Hub and Bespoke in Seattle (hubandbespoke.com). Telaio’s wool trousers and knickers, vests, caps, and women’s cycling dress pay tribute to a pre-spandex bicycling era while addressing the functional and aesthetic needs of the modern commuter, messenger, and joy-rider, for whom bicycling is an integrated—not a separated—part of life: because bicyclists are also business owners and dinner guests and ought not to have to change clothes to comfortably be both. To this end, Telaio clothing matches aesthetic refinement with world/weather-readiness and artistry with athleticism. With her work, Katharine hopes to increase and inspire both individual autonomy through bicycling and community inter-dependence through providing the opportunity to purchase a locally-made, long-lasting high-quality product. With admiration for the perfection-in-design exemplified by the bicycle, she urges you to “look as good on your bicycle as it looks on you!”
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