There's a sweet spot between a sport being limited to a few people in the know, and being fully mainstream. When innovation is coming from individuals and small brands. When the perfect tool doesn't exist yet but actually it doesn't fucking matter because let's just get outside already.
The Rough Stuff Fellowship was a British cycling club who, from the 1950s onwards, rode road bikes across terrain that would challenge a modern mountain bike. No suspension, no dropper posts, tires skinnier than they put on road bikes now. They didn't wait for the gear to catch up, they just got on their bikes. That same spirit shows up every time a pursuit gets ahead of industry. The 1970s running boom happened in cotton tees and canvas shoes. Race shirts with hand-stitched, slightly wonky lettering – worn until they fell apart. And before ultralight backpacking became a category with its own brand drops, there was r/ultralight – a subreddit full of people cutting the handles off their toothbrushes, sewing their own shelters, and figuring it out because the kit they needed simply didn't exist yet. Everyday people, making it work, long before anyone thought there was a market in it.
But then the industry catches up. And sometimes it overshoots.
Nike's Vaporfly changed road running forever when it launched in 2016. Carbon plate, thick stack of foam, proven to improve running economy by around 4%. Every major marathon record has fallen since. But they're optimised so specifically for sustained road racing pace that they're borderline useless for anything else. Uncomfortable to walk in, they degrade fast, unstable on anything but flat tarmac.
We want to occupy the space between these two poles, between a raincoat made from a bin bag and a raincoat over-engineered for one very specific activity. Clothes and accessories that have actually been thought about without becoming so specific they stop being useful the moment your plans change. Which out there, they always do.
So our first collection is small. A few versatile pieces that layer well, that are comfortable, technical but not too technical – and it starts with a t-shirt. Brent loves to run in cotton – and you should always start with what you know. After decades of an industry trying to get away from cotton, the fabric is having a renaissance, and to us it perfectly encapsulates everything we're about. Garments you can run in, and live in.
There's a photo that's been pinned up in our studio for a long time, a photo that Martijn took of an older gentleman hiking in a bucket hat and an old striped t-shirt. We kept coming back to this photo because to us it represented a relationship with the outdoors that predated the huge industry that's grown up around it. Before moisture-wicking, before body-mapping, before the gear became the whole point. So this is our take on that classic look, redesigned with a more modern technical fit – it’s lighter, and has more comfortable seams, but the spirit is the same.
And then there is our logo tee. Wonky letters playfully arched across the chest. We took our cues from the 1970s running culture I talked about before, when people were hand sewing their club names to their chests. We actually started exploring this technique when we wanted to make a flag for our first event. We ended up making it on a crafty friday – which is a weekly moment for us to experiment and make stuff with our hands. It’s also how our bandana came to be.
The bandana is perhaps one of the most versatile and lightweight pieces you can carry. A large cotton square that can be used as a neck gaiter, a sweat rag, it can be dunked in a stream and secured under your hat to cool you down. It can be a towel, an emergency bandage or tourniquet, it can filter sediment out of water before you purify it. The bandana has that spirit we’re constantly searching for – simple things that can do a lot of stuff well.
And then there’s the merinos, perhaps the most versatile pieces in our collection. Merino is one of those rare materials that does everything a modern technical fabric does – it regulates temperature, wicks moisture, resists odour – but it comes from a sheep. Our merinos are base layers, they’re single layers, they’re pyjamas, they’re the thing you wear day in day out, the thing you don’t want to take off because you’re so comfy. Extra long so you can tuck them in, but shaped in a way that they look good untucked too. Nice long sleeves, reflective detailing, a little paracord loop to hang them up to dry at camp. Small details to make them special, but we’ve not overcooked it.
Finally there’s our midlayer, and it’s a great example of how we think about technology. Made from Primaloft Evolve, a fabric that sits in a new category of ultralight and ultra-breathable fleeces, it’s the most technical piece in our first collection. This category of fabrics is truly incredible – what you get for the weight is unmatched. But there are fabrics in this space that are downright irresponsible – so light and fragile that you’re basically paying a premium price for a disposable garment. As outdoor enthusiasts we have to consider the environmental cost of our fancy materials. So we picked Primaloft not because it’s the absolute lightest in the category, but because from our testing it’s way more durable. You won’t need to baby this midlayer.
So that pretty much sums up our first collection. We hope you love the pieces as much as we do, and you wear them for years and years, so maybe one day someone takes your photo on a hike or a run and sticks it up on the wall of their studio.
