The first blog...

...so to begin. We use a mixture of vintage buttons and colours, every season these are blended together (in a bucket) and then we scoop out a handful and take them over to the factory to be  attached to the garments, it a thing we do, I like the randomness of the colours (do try to get the mixture right to work with the cloths but the odd moment of strong clashes makes for a better feel, anyway, after spending way too much time explaining is mixture of colours to our jacket factory not a week later a very proud gentleman rang me to say now he’d spent a whole day sorting our buttons by colours and matched them to the fabrics……it was a sad moment when I went into the factory and ‘un shanked’ the buttons to mix them all up again…I really felt for the man, he was so proud of the help he felt he was giving us. (continued below)

It’s not easy being random, we it easy when your randomness does not need to be explained,  Akimi and I were forced to start ARN, not at gunpoint but out of a need to eat, we’d been working for others and see their growth and with it a change in there ideals, not saying we’re so driven to the point of being arseholes about it, but in a business that is expand, design, develop, change.  The pressure is on from the word go to be all of these and with the growth comes the need to be known, with the design comes the idea of ‘new is good’ with the development it a story of running away from you base and change…well I’m old and change for change sake is not something I do well.  ARN is an based on needs, sometimes you need a nice fitting pant , you may love it and wear holes in it, then you need it again…this is what we do.  We decided to make the best we could with the resources we could get, improve and when it’s right…..STOP PLAYING WITH IT and just wear it, design is not what we do.  If we like the idea of it we will make it, if we get bored of it we’ll stop making it…this is not an art project, it’s how we feed ourselves and our child.

We wanted to make clothing to fit, to grow and to become part of the wearer, like that old shirt you wear when no one is around; you know the comfort shirt….

If we all wore the same thing we’d still look different.