Inside the Paris workshop, 6am

Maria Moreno has been hand-embroidering crescents for ORBIT since the first collection in 2021.

Her station is the one by the window. There's a Samsonite coffee cup that she's had for 11 years. There's always a single needle on the table.

'I'm a slow worker,' she says in Spanish, while threading silver thread. 'Twelve crescents a day. Some days five. My hands tell me what the day wants.'

Each crescent takes between 18 and 35 minutes depending on the fabric. Moon Print Wide Trouser? Twenty-six minutes. Cashmere Hoodie? Forty.

She threads the same silver thread we use for the Lunar collection — Italian-made, from a family in Como since 1948.

I asked her why crescents. She paused. 'Because the moon is the only thing we all share. Look up, you see the same shape. No borders. No languages. Just the moon.'

When she finishes a piece, she breathes on it once and presses the fabric flat. Then she sets it on the rack. Then she picks the next one up.

This is the work that doesn't scale. This is why ORBIT will never be a billion-dollar brand.