Do you remember those nights before hard lockdown — the ones where sleep wouldn't come because the questions were too loud? Mine had an extra layer. Not just the practical ones about what day-to-day life would look like, but a question I'd been carrying for some time already: where was my brand going?
If you knew Maya Prass before 2020, you'll know the brand had a distinct handwriting — custom-designed textiles, colourful, bold, original prints made into garments with a signature patchwork look. It was a unique aesthetic I had developed since the beginning of my career, and it had a real following. But for a while before COVID, I'd been feeling that it had reached its ceiling. The silk-screen printing method we relied on had become costly and unpredictable. The brand felt like it needed to move. I just couldn't see clearly where.
COVID forced me to find answers by removing the choice entirely. The printing became inaccessible overnight. Minimums became unaffordable. I found myself needing to figure out fast what Maya Prass looked like without the thing it had been built on. It was one of the most disorienting creative moments I've experienced. It was also, in hindsight, exactly the push the brand needed.
What the pivot revealed
With very little printed stock left in the studio, the question became: what does this brand look like with its custom print stripped away? Years of carefully developed silhouettes existed — shapes that had only ever been seen in printed fabric. The experiment was to let form, fit, and proportion carry those garments on their own, in solid colour and considered colourways.
That experiment became the foundation of the Maya Prass core collection and a made-to-order approach to womenswear. The Lourdes T-shirt, the Scarlet Pullover, and the Isla Cocoon Dress were among the first pieces — built around the question of what my ideal wardrobe pieces actually look like. This wasn't about following trends. It was about getting to the core of what I felt every wardrobe could benefit from: pieces considered for their practicality, with an interesting and unusual design edge, available in colours that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere.
This was the beginning of a different way of working. And as it turned out, a better one for what was to come.
What made-to-order clothing in South Africa actually means
Made-to-order clothing is not a common model in the apparel industry, and it's worth explaining what it actually means in practice — because it's often misunderstood.
Most garments, even those marketed as boutique or independent, are produced in bulk long before they reach a website or a retail rail. Units are made ahead of time, in quantities based on historical data and category experience. The pieces exist before the customer does. Production decisions are made using the best available information, but there is always a gap between what was made and what actually sells.
Made-to-order closes that gap entirely.
When an order is placed at Maya Prass, that garment does not yet exist. It enters a production flow in a Cape Town workshop, where fabric is sourced, pieces are cut, garments are sewn, checked, finished, and prepared. Whether it's a Magnolia Maxi Dress, Sophie Lantern Trousers, or a repeat order of the Lourdes T-shirt, each piece is made for the person who ordered it. Made because someone chose it. That process takes between 7 and 15 working days before dispatch. It's a small team — often just two people — working through orders, attending to custom requests, checking every detail. It is a hands-on, personal system.
What it makes possible: sizes 32 to 46, consistently available
One of the less obvious benefits of working this way is what it makes possible with sizing.
Maya Prass runs sizes 32 to 46 — eight sizes covering a genuine range of bodies. Maintaining that range in a traditional stock-holding model would be difficult for any small brand to sustain. Most brands producing locally made women's clothing face the same challenge when offering an extended size curve: production quantities have to be decided upfront, and the sizes at either end of the range are almost always under served. A size 46 sells out and doesn't return. A run of size 36 may sit waiting to be marked down because demand was misjudged.
In a made-to-order model, none of that applies. If a particular style sells predominantly in size 38 and size 44, those are the only sizes being made. Every size in the range stays available as long as there is fabric to cut.
Extended sizing in South African designer clothing exists. Extended sizing that actually fits well — where the proportions have been properly considered, where the garment works on the body wearing it — is harder to find consistently. Made-to-order makes it possible to offer that across eight sizes, without the inventory pressure that causes most brands to quietly deprioritise the extremes of their size curve.
The wait — and what it actually means
The most obvious difference with made-to-order is the waiting time, and it's worth being direct about what this means for the customer.
There's an almost automatic reaction when a waiting period appears on an apparel purchase. Modern retail has trained a very specific pattern into all of us: want it, have it. When that pattern breaks, it can feel unnatural — even when the wait is short.
What's worth noting is that this feeling exists almost entirely at one moment: the moment of decision. Questions surface quickly. Will I still want this in two weeks? Is it worth waiting? But once that decision is made — once someone commits to a piece — something tends to shift. Life continues. The urgency fades. And in its place comes something more interesting: the quiet anticipation of something you've chosen and invested in.
The wait is rarely the problem. It's the idea of the wait that feels uncomfortable.
There's something else worth saying here. Made-to-order naturally asks a question that fast retail doesn't: do you actually want this? Someone who commits to a piece and waits for it has already answered yes. That's a different kind of purchase — more considered, more intentional. And in most cases, it results in something that gets worn, valued, and kept.
What arrives
When a Maya Prass order arrives, it looks like a gift packaged specifically for you.
Each piece is wrapped in tissue and tied with a fabric off-cut ribbon, then placed inside one of our handmade bags — either a fabric envelope sewn from knit off-cuts, or a tote bag made from upcycled materials like Indian silk scarves from the brand's archive. The packaging bags are made from fabric that would otherwise have no further use. The same care that goes into making your garment goes into how it arrives.
It arrives like something chosen. Something made with care for the specific person receiving it.
This approach is part of a broader shift
Maya Prass is not the only brand working this way. Locally and internationally, small independent labels have been moving toward made-to-order and intentional small-batch production for the same reasons: it connects production to actual demand and allows for more care at every step. Piatori, a design studio based in Florida, operates on a fully made-to-order model. Son de Flor, a Lithuanian linen brand with a strong international following, works in small considered batches with a similar production philosophy.
In South Africa, the model is gaining ground too. Designers like Michelle Ludek and the team behind Nucleus have incorporated made-to-order into their offering — a sign that more independent local brands are finding ways to work with demand rather than ahead of it.
A different kind of purchase
Made-to-order works for anyone who has found something they genuinely want. The only thing it asks is a little patience — and that patience, it turns out, is its own filter. It tends to produce purchases that are considered rather than impulsive, chosen rather than grabbed.
That's not a particular type of customer. It's a particular state of mind. And it results, more often than not, in garments that get worn rather than forgotten.
Where things are going
Made-to-order came into Maya Prass out of necessity. What surprised me was how well it worked — for the business, for the product, and for the women buying it.
But a brand that wants to grow has to be honest about what growth requires. One of the things I hear most often from women interested in Maya Prass is a version of the same question: is there somewhere I can go and try this on? Right now, the answer is no. And if I want to change that — if I want the brand to be accessible in the way it deserves to be — the manufacturing model has to evolve too.
The next phase of Maya Prass is a hybrid. Certain pieces will move into production with local manufacturing partners, available as physical stock — in a store, at events, somewhere you can see and touch and try before you commit. Other pieces will remain made-to-order, available online across the full size range, produced when you choose them.
And alongside all of this, something else is quietly coming back. Print. Not the silk-screen method we started with, but something new — custom-designed, produced differently, built for where the brand is now rather than where it was. The disruption that began in 2020 has taken the brand through a complete overhaul of how it designs, manufactures, sells, and thinks. What's coming next feels, for the first time in a while, like a beginning.
The collection is at mayaprass.com. Sizes 32 to 46. Made in Cape Town.