NICOLA BUSSMANN is a womenswear atelier in Heinsberg, a town in the lower Rhineland where the light through a north window is good enough to check a seam without a lamp. We make two things: blouses and dresses. Eight styles, four per room, all drafted against the same set of body measurements so a waist is a waist wherever you find it in the range. The work is unglamorous and exact. It involves a collar against a lapel, a placket that closes flat, buttonhole spacing measured with a rule instead of an eye. We would rather sell you one blouse that closes properly than five that almost do. Nothing here is designed for a single evening.
The cloth is chosen before the shape. Cotton poplin for the work blouses, because it presses and holds a placket edge; a lighter voile for the lace-embroidered front, so the embroidery does not pull the button line out of true; a pointelle knit worked on the machine and then relaxed overnight, because a knit that is cut too soon will move after it is sewn. Woven dresses are cut on the straight grain wherever the seam allows. Every length is washed or steamed before it meets the scissors, and the shrinkage is written on the pattern card. We keep the rolls small and the notes long. Fewer pieces means fewer mistakes to trace.
The block is measured on a body that sits, reaches, and climbs stairs. Our size range covers small through extra large, and every style is tried on at both ends before it is approved. A blouse is drafted with enough room at the armhole to lift an arm without the placket gaping; a dress is set so the waist seam falls on the natural waist rather than an inch above it. Sleeves end where the wrist bends. If you are between two sizes, take the larger in a woven blouse and the smaller in the pointelle, which has give. This is clothing for work, dinner, and the walk between them.
Orders leave from Heinsberg. The atelier is on the first floor of a building near the market, with the cutting table under the window and the irons along the wall. Each parcel is folded in tissue with the buttons facing up so nothing presses into a placket on the way, wrapped in paper rather than plastic, with a small card and the care note inside. Questions about a measurement, a color, or a fabric can go through the contact form on this shop; one of us reads it and answers in the order the notes arrive. A note about fit is welcome before an order as well as after it. No question is passed to a call center.