Welcome to Lost City
When we launched the company a few years ago, we had no idea of the adventure we were embarking upon. Our humble idea was to get the hand-embroidered work of artisans toiling away in forgotten cities in front of an audience that would appreciate its exquisite beauty and uniqueness. We started out by selling to the trade through quality showrooms like David Sutherland and A.M. Collections, and soon, architects like Peter Marino were using Lost City fabrics in distinguished projects like the Ty Warner Suite at The Four Seasons hotel and the Koch residence in New York, and the media and blogs began to take notice and feature our work.
It has been an arduous but intensely gratifying experience so far, and over the past two years we have launched four major fabric collections featuring over 50 styles inspired by diverse influences ranging from the Weiner Werstatte workshops in Vienna to Mughal architecture.
An Appreciative Audience for Beauty
We are very grateful to the editors, showrooms and designers who have so passionately fallen in love with our fabrics. Their support has directly benefited dozens of families of artisans in Lucknow, India, and enabled them to continue and flourish in the dying art of hand-embroidery. In particular, we would like to thank all the interior designers using our fabrics for their best projects and challenging us to exceed the boundaries of hand-embroidery techniques; Ann Sutherland from David Sutherland; Ariel Kaminer and Julie Iovine from the New York Times; and Jeralyn Gerba from Daily Candy for being champions and enabling the larger public to be exposed to the amazing beauty that can be created with hands, thread and fabric. Most of all though, we are indebted to the dozens of Lost City artisans who create the amazing products we are so proud to bring to the world.
The Lost City website, created in collaboration with ******, has received its own share of accolades for being an appropriately adventurous online home for our products. There has been a lot of feedback from people who have stumbled upon it, and clients, and fans of iconic design. Fans want to see our embroidery on products other than fabric-by-the-yard for the trade. There have been many requests from people to be able to buy Lost City items online. We are responding to all of these and introducing multiple new product lines and designs with the launch of this new website and online store.
Everything New and Exciting
New product lines, on sale for the very first time, include collections of hand-embroidered pillows, scarves, bags, and one-of-a-kind chairs. The Lost City website’s new features include a media page where we can share our inspirations, a blog that will be frequently updated with the stories behind our products, and a new slide show and video player that features content created exclusively for us by video artists and musicians we like.
Our launch campaign features Turkish actress Betul Alganathy and French-American singer Maggie Kim, and the soundtrack to our videos was provided by the Icelandic psychedelic rock band Andrum. There will be a lot more exciting content added to the Lost City website in the coming weeks and months.
Lost City Products Are Now Available Here and Now!
What we are most excited about is the launch of our online store! We hope you will appreciate the toil and travel of a stubborn, battle-worn entrepreneur pursuing a beautiful dream, and the hours, days and weeks of work that goes into the creation a single Lost City Product. Our hand-embroidered pillow collection, for example, has taken months to conceive, and a single medieval design takes four days for two artisans to compete after which it is hand washed, finished, and hand sewn.
We hope you find the same joy in owning these products as we do in creating them, and share your Lost City adventure with others. Please remember to check out our Facebook page and sign-up for our Twitter feed.
See you again soon in Lost City
Afshan Durrani
New York City