A weaving mill five generations deep, and soap from the Sierra Nevada

Story 1 of 3 · France · home

How patient are you? In the Tissage Moutet workshop in Orthez, it takes two years to master warping. That's the very first step: thousands of threads laid side by side and wound onto a big roller, in the exact order of the colours of the pattern that will come out of it. Two years, just to get the threads ready. That makes me go quiet for a moment.

It started in 1874, when Jean-Baptiste Moutet bought a fabric shop in the centre of Orthez. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, he thought, and in 1913 he started his own weaving workshop. The house has stayed in the family ever since, for five generations.

What I love most is the story of Catherine Moutet. In the late nineties the mill hit a crisis. She rolled up her sleeves, took over the company and became the first woman to lead it. She asked international designers to create colourful collections. Since 2010, Benjamin Moutet, the founder's great-great-grandson, has run the mill.

They weave linge basque there: cotton and linen with stripes or geometric patterns, made only in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Only two companies hold the official geographical indication, and Moutet is one of them. The team covers seventeen different trades, and everyone learns the work in the workshop itself, from colleagues who have been there longer.

Right now their site shows their autumn tables. If you order something, it leaves straight from Orthez.

Story 2 of 3 · Belgium · clothing

How do you name a clothing brand? The makers of Sambalou had a lovely answer. Samba is the person through whom they got to know and love Africa. Lou is their first child, born around the same time as their first T-shirt collection.

It started in the eighties with two artists. One had just graduated in photography, the other in screen printing, and together they began making their own clothes at home. Today Sambalou is a Belgian family business. The whole family travels, draws and designs, and travel impressions turn into colourful prints. Their emblem is a salamander.

What I love most: everything is printed by hand in their own screen-printing workshop in Belgium, with Belgian water-based ink. They print on organic or recycled fabric, and only to order, so nothing is made in excess. Their manufacturers aren't allowed to deliver the clothes in plastic bags. And your parcel comes in a recycled box from Belgium, sized to what you ordered.

The cotton is GOTS-certified, and the sweatshirts are made from a sturdy 280 grams per square metre fabric. Made to last.

They honestly write that they aren't perfect, and that their work every day is about going a little further in the right direction. I find that disarming. If you order something from them, they really notice.

Story 3 of 3 · Spain · natural care

What do you do when you've had enough of green talk? Hugo A. Villar Hernández decided to do it himself. He studied at the University of Granada and specialised in phytocosmetics and plant-based raw materials. On Ajedrea's site he puts it himself: 'Fed up with the big laboratories and their formulas built around green marketing, I saw that the answer was in the small.'

So he chose a small craft lab in Granada. There he oversees the whole process, from raw materials from local producers (large quantities aren't needed) to fresh small batches that don't sit in a warehouse for years. The Sierra Nevada is right around the corner, with aromatic plants, and olive and almond oil.

What I like is that small doesn't mean sloppy here. The products carry the COSMOS ORGANIC label: more than 95 percent of the agricultural ingredients are organic. Ajedrea is an authorised manufacturer with the Spanish agency for medicines. And it is one of the ten craft businesses for which Andalusia declared Granada a zone of craft interest, the first lab for soap and perfume with that recognition.

The motto is 'Small is beautiful': simple recipes, with only what's needed. You can send back empty packaging, and whatever is usable, they reuse. They also run courses in soap making and natural cosmetics, online and in the lab.

There are creams, soaps, perfumes and hair care. If you order something, it comes from a lab in Granada you can simply walk into.