FEATURES
PAYNTER: RE-MAKING ICONIC JACKETS IN LIMITED EDITION BATCHES THREE TIMES A YEAR
24th September 2019
Are you looking for your next investment jacket? Bored of traditional denim and leather jackets? Maybe you fancy something different and a little more personal?
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With sustainability and slow fashion such a hot topic of conversation, consumers are desperately trying to step away from the conventions of fast fashion, and pay more attention to smaller, authentic brands.
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The concept of longevity and having a “buy better, buy less” mentality is slowly but surely becoming the norm. Particularly to modern day consumers who care about sustainability and are making a conscious effort to switch to more environmentally-friendly methods of consumption.
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So, enter Paynter. The jacket brand built around manufacturing in line with demand (only 300 jackets are made per batch), with zero waste but maximum exclusivity.
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The creative couple behind Paynter jacket launched the business idea on their second date and sold out of all 300 pieces of their first batch, in just 14 minutes.
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With their second style (a luxe moleskin French Chore jacket with contrasting metal buttons – Ooh La La!) about to drop on 5th October at 9:00am, I interview creators Becky and Huw, who share their heart-warming brand story, their obsession with every part of the process, and why they know slow fashion is future.
Tell me how you came up with the original idea of replicating iconic jackets and where the name Paynter jacket came from.
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Batch No.1 came from a French chore jacket that Huw had picked up, when he was teaching himself to make jackets with scraps of denim from work. The original was slightly slimmer fitting and looked great on everyone who tried it on. We decided to re-make this iconic jacket but with the best materials we could get our hands on. The search took us to Italy to a mill called Berto who’d been making fabrics for workwear since 1800s, then back to Britain to pick up buttons made from nuts (!). We always wear test properly to see what works and what tweaks need making, and so we went through 5 samples before getting this jacket as we wanted it to be.
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I love how involved you guys are every step of the way, why did you feel it was so important to oversee each process of the product journey? And How did Huw get his blue arm?
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Absolutely. We have to have an eye for detail and oversee every step of the process, to know that we’re producing a jacket in great conditions, with high quality fabrics and made by people who are cared for in their place of work. We’ve visited our factory (Portugal) twice in the last 6 months, met the teams at our mill for batch 1 (Italy) and visited the garment dye house (26km from our factory, in Portugal). Now that we’ve met the people who make our jackets, we have a closer bond.
Haha, Huw got his blue arms from dying an old sample with Indigo - it took a week to come off but luckily they’re back to normal now!
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How did you come up with the quantity of 300 jackets and having 3 drops per year, what was the strategy behind those timelines?
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It was fairly simple. Our minimum order with our factory is 300 jackets. So we had to find 300 people who would want a piece of Paynter, to ensure no jackets went to waste. Luckily, we have a wait list of over 3,000 people for our jackets, so we know we won’t be wasting a single piece. We’re keeping our production limited to 300 pieces because we want to keep our close eye on the details and quality, rather than expand quickly and risk ruining the quality of what we’re making.
"So we had to find 300 people who would want a piece of Paynter, to ensure no jackets went to waste."
With regards to sourcing the fabric and the dyes, tell me about the research behind that.
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We learnt that sourcing the fabric ourselves means we know exactly where it comes from. Some mills just ‘finish’ the fabric, rather than make it in their factory, which means it will say ‘made in ___’ but you don’t actually know where it was made, or in what conditions. That didn’t feel right to us, so we decided to source all the fabric directly with mills we know and trust. The first fabric we used was from Berto, a mill in Italy who started out making workwear in the 1800s. Now they specialise in denim and denim innovation.
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Your first batch was extremely successful and you shipped to 16 countries across the world, that is an incredible achievement! Which countries were the most surprising/interesting to you?
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Thank you! Our jackets launched at 9am on 11th May, so while that’s a great time to grab a coffee and be ready in the UK, we had customers setting their alarm for 2am or 3am who were based in L.A. That was pretty nuts. Seeing those customers go to great lengths to support us at the start was an amazing feeling and one we’ll never forget.
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Are you going to do anything different with Batch 2, what are your learnings from Batch 1?
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Yes! Every batch takes on an iconic jacket in a new way. The next jacket will be made in a moleskin fabric that we’d been looking to perfect for months. There will be four new colours as well as some design tweaks we’ve made following Batch No.1. We’ll be launching in October, and each jacket will continue to be numbered and limited edition, this time with a new illustrator who has designed an incredible label on the inside of our jackets.
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Apologies for a more personal question; how are you guys finding it working together?
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We love it. As cringe as it sounds it’s great working with your best friend. We know each other very well so we can talk about anything and be very honest with each other which is essential in business. Luckily, we both have a very similar purpose and eye for design so we have a shared creative vision for product and the company as a whole. We live in different places though - Becky is in London and Huw is in Wales, so we see each other every weekend and spend a lot of time planning things and discussing ideas on the phone!
You mention that slow fashion is your future; what is the future for Paynter? Do you have a list of other iconic jackets that you want to replicate next? Will you venture away from jackets at all?
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Absolutely. We’ve got a VERY long list of icons we want to remake, finding the best mills and makers we can to suit each style. We’ve got plans to keep pushing how we can show more of the making process, to push transparency further. We’ll never move away from jackets, our list of jackets is long enough to keep us busy for years!
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You can sign up to our next jacket release in October by following us on Instagram and signing up to our waitlist via our website www.paynterjacket.com