It Started with a Prompt...

I have always been drawn to materials that last.

Before Cadencea, I designed and made leather handbags in London. Before that, gemstone jewellery. There is something about working with natural materials, the weight of them, the honesty of them, that I keep returning to. Materials that do not pretend to be something they are not. Materials that age well and stay relevant long after trends have moved on.

Velvet has always been one of them. I have owned velvet dresses for years - the kind you keep wearing season after season because nothing quite replaces the way they feel. Elegant without trying. Tactile in a way that synthetic fabrics simply cannot replicate.

At some point, I knew I wanted to make something with velvet. I just did not know what.

Cushions felt too obvious. Curtains, too expected. Furniture upholstery is a craft that takes years to master properly, and I was not willing to do it badly. So I sat with the question for a while - what can you actually make with velvet that does not already exist in every home decor shop on the high street?

One evening, I typed exactly that into ChatGPT. What can I make out of velvet? Give me some options.

Among the suggestions was one I had never considered: velvet mirrors.

I asked it to visualize the idea. When the image appeared on my screen, something clicked immediately. I wanted to make that. Not a version of it - that exact thing. Round, padded, upholstered entirely in velvet, a mirror that felt more like a piece of art than a functional object.

I started searching online, expecting to find dozens of brands already doing this. Instead, I found almost nothing. A few attempts here and there - inconsistent, underdeveloped, nothing that felt like a considered product or a real brand. The gap was real.

I showed my partner. He has an eye for detail and finish that I deeply respect - the kind of precision that premium materials demand and forgive nothing less. Why don't we try? I said. Let's experiment and see what happens.

What followed was nine months of trial and error that we had not fully anticipated.

Finding the right mirror bases. Sourcing velvet with the right weight and pile. Learning how fabric behaves around a curved, padded frame - how tension works, where wrinkles appear and why, how to remove them. Every problem solved revealed another one underneath it.

But we kept going. Because the idea was right, even when the execution was not yet.

Today, Cadencea's debut collection exists because of a single prompt, nine months of stubborn persistence, and a shared belief that if something should exist in the world, someone has to be willing to make it.

If you have ever wanted something you could not find anywhere - something the market keeps failing to offer - you will understand exactly why we started.

And perhaps that is why you are here...