The Mission

This is the one that ends up everywhere. Over a shirt on the drive in, under a jacket on exercise, on the sofa on leave. That is why it is a 270 gsm brushed fleece and not a thin promotional hoodie: it has to survive being the thing you reach for every day for a year. We print it in house, and after four years of testing blanks this is the one we stopped arguing about. The printer changed a few times along the way as well. What is standing here now is a serious bit of kit, and a print off it holds its edge instead of going soft after a few washes.

A tee is what you wear when it is warm and when you are not trying to say anything, which is exactly when the design does the talking. 200 gsm cotton so it keeps its shape, with the print across the back where somebody who knows will clock it without a word being said. Four years of high standards, tested every run: it has to mean something to the trade it belongs to.

It was never the plan. The designs were drawn so the lads we knew could wear the trade they had passed, and then people started wearing them everywhere. In the gym, on the platform, at a reunion, off duty in town.

What comes back to us most is that people get recognised. Somebody spots the mark on the chest, knows exactly what it means, and says something. Nine times out of ten that turns into a good five minutes with a stranger who turns out not to be one.

Somebody who has been there recognises it and says nothing. Somebody who has not simply sees a good garment. Both of those are the right outcome.

The first is that you are wearing somebody else’s story. You train in this weather, you deploy from here, and the only decent kit with any meaning printed on it comes from the United States, with American units and American wars on it. That has been the situation for twenty years, because pride in service reads as an American thing, and that is exactly why nobody on this side of the water ever built it.

The second is that outside the gate none of it shows. Off duty, on leave, on the way home in ordinary clothes, there is no shorthand for what you actually do all week. For the ones who have already handed the uniform back it goes quieter still.

We are not going to fix that. We can make it something you can wear.

Done. Sixty thousand people in more than seventy five countries wear something we made, most of them serving or recently out. The catalogue covers most of the branches and a good part of the trades.

In progress. The gaps. There are still branches and trades that cannot find themselves in it, and those are the ones we are working through next.

Not yet. Being within reach. For most of Europe we are still a parcel and a wait, and that has to change before any of this counts as arrived.