30/08/2018
I wrote about Paladrin a year or so back when they were just starting out with their “Made by London” idea, where the clothes were designed and made in London, using British fabrics. Well, it’s no surprise that after the initial success they are back again with the sequel. You know how it is when you’re onto a good thing?…
27/05/2018
It’s no secret that I tend to be a fan of the small brands. The brands that start out with a wish to do something different, pulling inspiration from somewhere outside the mainstream, and maybe without a primary goal of becoming a global brand. Just for the sake of doing something cool. There are a number of brands like this…
20/05/2017
Four years ago I posted a pretty critical piece about a fabric that at the time was on the brink of enjoying something of a comeback. The main point of the article was that the historical facts that were being bandied about might not actually be as historical as they were made out to be. There was much talk of…
11/05/2017
You’ve probably not heard mention of the plight of the goat before. That’s ok, most people haven’t. We tend to see a goat and think “what a cute, wee fellah!” and leave it at that. I’m not going to claim any massive knowledge about goat history, goat symbolism or anything else goat related, apart from one single point: Goats get…
08/05/2017
Marcus de fits nicely into a recurring theme of late: A very small company wanting to realise a very clear idea. In the case of Marcus De, the owner Miguel, comes from a family that made shoes. Miguel himself, London born and bred, is a cordwainer by trade, as was his father and grandfather. It wasn’t his first port of…
02/04/2017
If you’ve been following this blog for a while you can’t have failed to notice that there is a lot of love for the traditional leather shoe. A hand worked leather upper with a solid Goodyear-welted sole results in a solid, long-lasting piece of footwear. If there is a downside, it does also make for a fairly hefty piece of…
23/10/2016
A few weeks back I wrote a piece about the new Made in Britain brand Lane Fortyfive. At the end of the piece I mentioned that I had ordered some garments for myself and promised to report back in due course. Well, those that follow my Instagram will already have noticed and appreciated that the garments arrived and look the…
03/04/2016
Honest, Guv, I wasn’t looking for trouble. Trouble in the way of another duffle-coat, that is. And certainly not another blue one. It was just that it started ticking all my boxes, saying all the right things. And it was just so very, very blue. And it can not be ignored. The royal blue wool is so vibrant it makes…
26/03/2016
There is something to be said for starting out with the intention of making the best it can possibly be. And not in a bragging or loud way, but just getting down to it, working through a design, finding the best components and then assembling it as well as can be done. Really, it’s not an impossibly difficult task to set about…
19/03/2016
I’m at the start of a series of posts about companies that for some reason or other interest me. Either due to unique products, some quirky aspect of their business, or because they have a background and history that is interesting. In the case of NPS Solovair, the interest starts with the company name. The NPS part dates all the…