How Toogood Mastered Sustainable Clothing - Without The Marketing Spiel - British Vogue

5/20/2020 How Toogood Mastered Sustainable Clothing – Without The Marketing Spiel | British Vogue
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https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/toogood-sustainable-british-brand 1/15
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© Tom Johnson
# G E T YO U R G R E E N S
How Toogood Mastered Quietly Sustainable

Clothing – Without The Marketing Spiel
B Y S CA R L E T T C O N LO N
26 APRIL 2020
When sisters Faye and Erica Toogood launched a unisex, sustainable, predominantly British-
made brand in 2013, they freely admit they “didn't know what they were doing.” Now, they're
leading the way in an industry that’s ﬁnally waking up to timeless fashion.
“Sustainable”, “seasonless”, “unisex”, “timeless design” – they all sound like familiar
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fashion concepts now, right? But rewind to 2013, when Faye and Erica Toogood
launched their fashion line, Toogood, and the landscape looked very different.
The unisex model which defines the sisters’ collections was deemed conceptual
enough at its launch to warrant a slot on Women’s Hour in the early days.
Meanwhile, their business model, which champions made-to-last designs, was at
odds with the wider fashion industry. Remember? This was when the insatiable
desire for “newness”, propelled by the influence of social media, was ramping up
and brands raced to feed it – a path which has since proven to be untenable at best,
catastrophic at worst.
Read more: Inside Faye Toogood’s Restored Modernist Home
Having felt its way instinctively into the fashion field, Toogood was always a bit
different. Seven years ago, Faye, a celebrated interiors designer, had already
established the renowned furniture, art and architecture platform Studio Toogood,
but found her perfect fashion partner in her sister Erica, a trained pattern-cutter
and designer with a background in tailoring and theatre. Together, with no direct
knowledge of the inner workings of the fashion industry, they collaborated on an
installation project for the 2013 London Design Festival in London’s Seven Dials
district for which they made 49 coats, each labelled with the name of one of the
area’s historic trades (“brewer” and “puppeteer” among them). A professional
sisterhood was born. “It was a moment of coming together,” says Erica, “it wasn’t
prescriptive, it was free-spirited.”
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© Tom Johnson
They hadn’t intended to start a brand, says Faye, but they knew so many people who
were looking for understated and beautifully structured clothing; friends, family,
colleagues who didn’t want to wear high fashion or buy heavily branded clothes.
Plus, she started to notice that “our wardrobes with our partners were starting to
blur and the kids [her affectionate term for her team] in the studio were all starting
to dress a similar way.”
Their hunch that unisex clothing would continue to boom has stood them in good
stead: they’re now stocked at Matchesfashion.com, Dover Street Market and
Selfridges. “We started off where we took the approach that every single piece was
unisex – now we have pieces that have a menswear leaning and a womenswear
leaning, but the large majority is deemed as pure unisex,” says Faye. “The world is
not completely unisex, obviously, and it doesn’t need to be, but I think [the blurring
of boundaries] is really interesting.”
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Their lack of experience gave them a good perspective, they agree. “We took the rule
that we do things the way we want to do,” says Erica. “We didn’t know what a line-
sheet was or how everyone was doing things, so we just did things in the way they
made most sense,” chimes in Faye.
Initially, this translated as making use of canvas rolls Faye had left over from an
interiors project and more recently sharing leftover fabric with the designer Phoebe
English on a collaboration (they also frequently donate leftover reams to schools
and charities). In a sweet family echo, their grandmother was a tailor who, during
the Second World War, made underwear out of parachutes. A pioneering,
sustainable spirit apparently runs in the family.
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© Tom Johnson
But a fashion brand can’t just run on lofty “concept”. “People are drawn by the
sculptural, simple, timeless aesthetic of the pattern-cutting in combination with the
materials we use, which are always the best we can get,” says Faye, of why their
pieces are “forever” items. “That’s a magical combination that people treasure.”
Their sculptural lines, functional consideration and exquisite execution skew the
mundane idea of “everyday clothing”; instead they fuse ease with emotional
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attachment.
Read more: How Will Covid-19 Permanently Affect Our Shopping Habits?
It’s unsurprising, given that Erica works in an annexe of the Toogood design studio
surrounded by artists, architects and product designers, that everything is rooted in
purpose and feeling. Much like an investment you would make for your home, she
intuitively designs clothes to last longer than a season. Case in point: patterns she
cut for their very first collection are still their bestsellers.
“We treat our pieces [as] objects because that’s how the house works,” she explains.
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“The process of ‘making’ is a very similar one from a chair to a pair of trousers.” The
names of their creations follow the same school of thought and are coined after
professions, harking back to their first project together: The Photographer Jacket,
The Baker Trouser, The Writer Dress to name a few. “It gives purpose,” says Faye, of
the tradesman links. “If you [think about] a photographer needing giant pockets to
put his lenses in or the baker who’s bending down getting his bread in the oven and
the trousers need to be super loose and not too long on the floor otherwise they will
get covered in flour...” she laughs.
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Faye and Erica Toogood in their studio.

© Luke Johnson
Sustainability is something to which Toogood adheres – “an internal mindset and

moral standard,” as Faye puts it – but not something they necessarily shout about.
That being said, their commitment to championing British materials,
manufacturers and factories has been at the heart of their brand’s DNA since day
dot. They work with suppliers in Yorkshire and south west England, while their
factories are easily accessed from where the sisters live in London. When they do
produce outside of the UK, it’s for good reason: they have found a shirt factory in
Portugal, for instance, where the quality is second to none, and the shipping is
carbon-neutral.
They have occasionally stumbled. Toogood’s sustainable, British-made denim line,

for instance, which they launched in 2018, was short-lived. “It was the purest
sustainable product we could make,” explains Faye. “Even British companies who
make British jeans are buying their denim in Turkey, America or China, but we
sourced denim from Lancashire and made a product that was entirely British.” (“It
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was proper selvedge,” Erica adds wistfully.) Such fastidiousness, however, meant
that a pair of jeans cost £750 – too steep a price point for retailers. A re-launch of
the same shapes made from organic denim from Portugal at lower price points is
slated for this September and, for the quantities a small label like Toogood can
afford, “they are the best they can be” right now.
“When push comes to shove,” says Faye, “we’re [all] trying to work out what we’re
going to spend our money on – things have to have meaning”. It’s a sentiment never
truer than now, but one which has been at the heart of the Toogood mentality since
that installation in Seven Dials in 2013 – or maybe, even, those parachute knickers.
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5/20/2020 How Toogood Mastered Sustainable Clothing – Without The Marketing Spiel | British Vogue

How Toogood Mastered Quietly Sustainable

Read more: Inside Faye Toogood’s Restored Modernist Home

Faye and Erica Toogood in their studio.

Sustainability is something to which Toogood adheres – “an internal mindset and

They have occasionally stumbled. Toogood’s sustainable, British-made denim line,

More from British Vogue…

Marc Quinn: Five Favourite Objects | Episode 3 | Brit…

A RTS & L I F EST Y L E

© 2020 Condé Nast

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