Walpole: What is your career background – and how did that lead to launching your company?
Callum McCall: I toyed with being a lawyer, qualifying as a barrister before moving to the world of corporate communications. Both were rooted in using the power of words to persuade people to adhere to a certain view. My Co-Founder, George Rutherford-Jones, meanwhile, was an army officer in a cavalry regiment for six years, where a cool head for people and a decent grasp of operational strategy were both essential.
Neither of those experiences was the catalyst for deciding to start a company in the fashion industry, though. The impetus for Original Fibres that was the enjoyment we shared for the London menswear scene and the lifestyle that went with it. More specifically, the soft tailoring houses of Berwick Street in Soho and Jermyn Street, just off Piccadilly. We decided to convert passion into profession by launching our own brand, hoping that we’d be able to add our own small chapter to the storied history of the British fashion industry.
Tell us about your company…
Original Fibres is a fabrics-first menswear brand. Always natural, always low impact. Not necessarily how you’d expect them to be used. Founded as a brand specialising in linen for all seasons, our offer has expanded to include other low-impact, natural fabrics like wool. Our mission is to show people there’s a better way to buy and consume clothing. We use different weights and weaves of luxury-grade natural fabrics to change perceptions around how and where they can be worn. Think linen for winter, wool for summer. They are both among the world’s most sustainable clothing fabrics, but their versatility goes largely untapped.
Why was launching this company important to you?
First and foremost, we wanted to challenge ourselves. To take the leap and see how we fared in a fiery, competitive industry. But those slightly self-centred ambitions quickly transformed into something much broader than any one person. Soon, we were fully committed to our brand mission of showing people there’s a better way to buy and consume clothing.
How does your company represent the future of British luxury?
We see ourselves amongst a cohort of brands that are redefining what British luxury might look like in future. A group that remains sympathetic and true to the tenets of British luxury – pursuing outstanding craftsmanship in products that have a distinctly British sensibility – while adding a new dimension that puts greater focus on material impact. I guess you might call it the era of conscious luxury.
What’s an important value for you that you’ve ensured is part of your business?
Integrity is the single-most powerful value we aspire to embody. It informs our approach to everything we do and underpins every decision we make. We made the choice very early on that we would do everything we could to make sure we didn’t compromise the integrity of our brand mission. That decision meant doing a huge amount behind the scenes that no-one would ever see or even know about, but the principle set a precedent that has remained true to this day.
Tell us about an obstacle you’ve experienced in establishing your business, and how you overcame it?
As strong as the moral imperative to transform the fashion industry might be, we’ve consistently faced the obstacle of the status quo. Which is to say, the prevailing attitude of doing things in a certain way because that’s how they’ve been done for the last four decades; entrenched supply chains, dominated by the bigger players, with insufficient consideration for the environment and little incentive to change. We haven’t fully overcome the obstacle, but we’ve made headway by finding extraordinary suppliers who share the same hunger for quality and change that we do.
