JUST along from the ancient landgate into the East Sussex town of Rye is Merchant & Mills, draper, haberdasher and field of dreams, where you could happily lose yourself for an afternoon. Arriving to meet founder Carolyn Denham, I notice a tall, elegant woman browsing rolls of fabric; she is still there when I leave, three hours later.
The double-height brick building, a former warehouse, is filled with autumn sunlight; there are bolts of fabric in plaids, stripes and solid colours and big wicker baskets of samples. Whitewashed walls are hung with dresses in simple, unstructured designs, each with a square of contrasting gingham knotted around the shoulders. The patterns for making them are laid out on shelves below. Here is a box of darling little buttons, each one named and dyed to match a fabric—lemon bon bon, demon scarlet, calamine, speckled blue.
