Seven Layer

I’m always stressed and anxious… (laughs). I think it comes with the territory of being a brand owner.

I tend only to feel those emotions when I’m actually in our 7L store, which isn’t as much as I’d like these days, and I get to feel the energy from our customers first-hand. It’s so important to understand, good or bad, if your designs work. I love to see how the customers react, how they feel, and how their faces and eyes light up in the mirror, trying on a piece for the first time. At 7L, we’ve always aspired to ensure that when trying on a 7L piece, there is always an elevated experience, a moment when there’s a connection directly communicated from the brand, the designer, the craftsman, the fabrics, directly to the customer. If there’s not, then I haven’t done my job properly.

It’s true, I now do everything myself, from concept and design through to choosing fabric, manufacturing management and all creative work, Instagram, photography, website, etc. It keeps me busy twenty hours a day, and that’s no joke! (Laughs).

To be honest, the brand wasn’t really a business until 2020, so I’ve only been doing this full-time for 4-5 years now. In 2016, I was drafted in initially as the sole investor, and it was two years after that I decided to take full control, purchasing the idea of the business, intellectual property, logo, etc. in 2018. Before that point, things hadn’t been running very well, but, coming back to your question: Between 2016 and 2024, a lot has happened, not just to the world and the brand, but also to me personally. I do feel this impacted the brand’s overall progression and direction, but that being said, over the past 12 months, we have made some big steps to reconnect with a younger audience, and the new Kuro System is more fashionable, focused, and directional. Over the past few years, I have learned and appreciated how important it is to be connected to your audience.

Absolutely not, haha! I’m an engineer by trade, working in the railway environment. Suits in meetings midweek and then in the rain, wind, and snow on night shifts at weekends! Absolutely no time to be fashionable.

Yes, the brand does specialise in all-weather products, but moreover, we specialise in high-quality, well-designed, sustainable fashion pieces that fuse with technical fabrics. We also design and manufacture using natural fabrics too, like cotton and wool. Our main target market and audience is aimed at the lower end of the millennial population, which allows us to create pieces that are a little more expensive and elevated. Primarily, this keeps us away from unethical, unsustainable fast fashion brands but under luxury brands like Prada, Gucci, and Burberry.

From the brand's inception, we’ve always done brightly coloured pieces, but following the pandemic, I decided to create a collection that was a little more muted using browns, oranges, greys, and blacks. I envisaged our audience would lean more towards a grounded and sophisticated colour palette, helping them blend in and creating comfort and stability within a world that seems to be losing a grip on its own reality. I know I’m exhausted with it. Social media, and now AI, is and will continue to change the way human beings present, represent, and interact. Big logos and big branding have been around for a while, and I just feel that vintage, classic, authentic pieces are coming back strong. Don’t get me wrong, I still think there’s a place for logos, but they may appear more subtle over the next couple of years or so.

We have never been a drop brand, but this year, we tried something different. On the one hand, it’s been great at attracting new customers to the brand, but on the other, most existing customers wanted it dropped all at once. As a growing brand, we’ll continue to experiment and evolve.

The luxury basics this year are an oversized, slightly cropped t-shirt and a selection of oversized sweaters, hoodies, joggers, and shorts, all manufactured in Portugal from 100% luxury cotton. They’re stunning. I’m a sucker for a sweater, and I like mine oversized, so I go one size up with an XL, and for me, you can’t beat the black or brown. Pure class.

There have been three drops so far of basics, including cotton t-shirts, sweaters, shorts, etc., and also drops including technical pieces, such as overshirts with Coolmax Technology. This helps the wearer stay cool in warm weather or warm in cold weather. The last drop for SS24 is this Thursday at 8 pm. Generally, we always release Layers 1-4 in spring and summer and Layers 5-7 in autumn and winter. Throughout the year, this allows you to build up your layers and wardrobe.

My factories have gone mad with me over the past twelve months (laughs), but they have understood our current position as a growing brand and that obviously I’m the only designer/garment technician within. As I said, the past five years have been a fast learning curve, but I’m very proud of what we’ve created, and we’re generating new customers daily, receiving a lot of interest globally.

I would use words like quality, resilient, and integral.

We only use suppliers who are committed to ethical and sustainable policies and values and who are audited on a regular basis by world-recognized organisations where we can design and manufacture from recycled materials, such as reclaimed Japanese fishing nets. Most of the technical shirts, shorts, and jackets in our Kuro System that have just been released are manufactured from recycled plastic bottles too.

I wouldn’t like to get into the politics of other individual brands, but at Seven Layer we do everything we can to design, procure, and manufacture in a sustainable and ethical way. It’s been in our DNA from the beginning. 7L uses a very, very high-quality, well-skilled supply chain throughout all our processes, which I’m sure you can tell in everything that we produce. It has taken seven years and a lot of time and money to get to this level. A friend of mine (who is very respected in the outerwear industry) messaged me the other day saying he’d read a book called LESS: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things, Can Make Us Happier by Patrick Grant, saying I should read it, that it would resonate with me, as we share the same philosophy. That message alone reaffirmed that 7L, as a brand, is on the right path. We make quality garments that last for years. That’s sustainable. No marketing is needed. We won’t always get it right, but we definitely make an effort to, and I think that matters.

Good question! I get asked this all the time, especially when we were producing our longline camo parkas in 2020, etc. Look, I grew up in the 90s as a teenager getting my coat nicked down Back Piccadilly in Manchester! I was inspired by a golden era of music and magic that will never happen again in my lifetime and a band that inspired me and so many—Oasis and LG love a good coat, doesn’t he? Fashion-wise, at the moment would have to be Pharrell. 

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