How did East Rome Designs begin?

For 28 years, Krista West created high-quality, custom-tailored cassocks and vestments and many churches have been beautified with garments and paraments made to her exacting aesthetic standards. In 2018, Krista was diagnosed with arthritis in her hands and underwent multiple procedures in order to keep tailoring, but eventually her doctor told her it was time to hang up the scissors in order to prevent permanent damage.

Not wanting to leave her customers without a source for high-quality cassocks, she decided to take the thousands of client measurements she had worked with over the decades and use them to develop standard-size cassocks and exorassa. These standard sizes opened the door to quantity production runs, which greatly reduced the cost of these traditional garments and made them even more accessible. The result was East Rome Designs which is run by her husband, Fr Alban West.

Krista now spends her time at her folk embroidery design work, which can be seen at Avlea Folk Embroidery. Begun as a hobby, her designs now delight thousands of embroidery enthusiasts around the world and she keeps very busy with her design, photography, and research work related to historic folk embroidery from around the world. She is grateful to the many clients and church communities she has worked with over the years and hopes East Rome Designs fulfills their need for high-quality and affordable clerical garments made in the traditional style.