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The color chartreuse has a bit of a boozy background. It was named after a French liqueur called “chartreuse” which has a greenish-yellow hue. 

The liqueur was first produced in 1605 by the Carthusian monks of France. 

François Hannibal d’Estrées discovered a secret recipe that allegedly helped its consumers ‘live a long life.’ He brought the recipe to Monks near Paris, who ultimately sent it down to La Grande Chartreuse abbey. The recipe was eventually tested in 1737, and about 60 years later, was tweaked to create Green Chartreuse. 

This new and improved Chartreuse boasted a more mild flavor profile and is the recipe still used today. 75 years later, Frère Bruno Jacquet crafted another tweaked version of the recipe, which became the Yellow Chartreuse that we know and love today.

It takes 130 botanicals macerating for eight hours in copper to create Green Chartreuse. The final product’s ABV? 55% - and it’s flavor lands herbal/slightly medicinal on the palate. On the contrary, Yellow Chartreuse is a bit lower in alcohol (40% ABV) and leans sweeter on the flavor profile. 

Green Chartreuse gets its color from chlorophyll, whereas Yellow Chartreuse gets its pigment from saffron. Both colors are naturally occurring, but the steps to this beverages outcome are nothing short of extraordinary.  

Having your own clothing manufactured is a lot like brewing, the perfect chartreuse liqueur. In my years of running both a fashion design incubator and small batch manufacturer, I’ve come to find three common themes among the issues new fashion designers experience. This episode reaches deep into those issues and provides two different examples of each three.

Three mistakes new fashion designers often make during manufacturing:

• Manufacturing too many colorways, or contrast stitching details.
• Manufacturing too many designs at a time, or too much product in general
• Signing a manufacturing contract before the design is sale-ready (stitching, fit, supplies)

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