It’s common knowledge that there is a difference between fashion and style. Fashion is something that people are interested in right now but may not be interested in when we skip forward in time. It might be 10 years before a fashion dies out, it might only be a matter of weeks or months but nevertheless fashion is to put it bluntly, a fad. Style, on the other hand, is something that will always be popular. A good example of this is the Mini Cooper and another good example is a well-tailored Harris tweed jacket. People will want something stylish for the rest of time.
I’m Harry Bakewell, head of graphics, photography and social media at retweed. I’m part of a three man team who have recently started a website selling vintage tweed jackets at affordable prices. We are all students and one Saturday afternoon, while socialising, we got onto the topic of vintage clothing. We all liked the tweed jackets, brogues and other vintage clothing because it could be worn by people of all ages and would always be stylish. The problem for us was that it was so expensive to buy. Any high street retailer sells replicas for £60-£80 and many of the vintage shops or those selling the originals were charging £40-£60 for a Harris tweed jacket which for a student isn’t affordable. We didn’t think any more of the subject and forgot about it. Well, the rest of us had forgotten about it, Nathan Marshall & Carl Willimott hadn’t though. They had both thought about it significantly after our conversation and decided that they could source some vintage clothing and then sell it to me and our friends, who couldn’t afford the shops prices. This went well and the whole of our friend group ended up wearing tweed jackets to almost every occasion. After the success of this venture they did some research into how popular this clothing was on a countrywide scale and the results were unanimous. People liked vintage.
I was then added to the team to take photos and do any design work, I then offered to do the social media side of the business. Between us, we had a good skill set to go out and make a business to help get vintage clothing out to the people who loved it but just couldn’t afford it. retweed was born.
Our mission is to find out what vintage clothing people want, source this clothing and then sell it to them for a price that is affordable. So if you are reading this and there is something missing from your wardrobe then let us know and we will try to help.
Check out our website www.retweed.co.uk and let us know what you think. We are due to be adding more Harris tweed, Levi jeans, Levi’s womens shorts, Barbour jackets and more as soon as possible so follow us @retweed_cnk to get the latest updates. Thanks for reading.
