A Sweatshirt That’s Built to Last

Credit: The 30 Year Sweatshirt

Unless you’re frugal like my father, chances are that you have a seasonal change of clothes, partly to manifest that you’re in the trend instead of out, partly because of natural wear and tear. To quote my father, clothes and shoes and bags (a.k.a. his briefcase) shouldn’t require often changes if you pay enough attention to their maintenance. And he speaks as he finds, as a man that owns shirts, suits, and leather shoes that are over 10 years old and still in pristine condition.

Increasingly, people are coming to the realisation that my father is right. Of course they don’t know my father personally, but it’s the rationale that he upholds regarding consumption: spend only when necessary to conserve the earth’s resources and minimise our waste to the planet. And that is how The 30 Year Sweatshirt was born.

Currently pledging funds on kickstarter, The 30 Year Sweatshirt is the brainchild of UK menswear designer Tom Cridland, who believes the prevailing trend of built-in obsolescence – big fashion powerhouses’ practice of making their clothing fragile enough to get their customers to return and buy more – has to stop, because “our natural resources deserve a higher level of respect and so do you”. And so he embarked on the mission to prove that clothing can, and should, last a lifetime.

The 30 Year Sweatshirt, as it turns out, is made with Cridland’s partnership with a group of old school Portuguese craftsmen, who have been hand-making clothing since 1964, to create a premium knit crewneck sweatshirt that is made ethically with organic cotton, crafted out of luxury fabric from only the finest quality yarn, and backed with a 30-year guarantee. If you’re worried a sweatshirt that is built to last a lifetime will end up making you look naff, know that Cridland has made clothing for Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Stiller, Stephen Fry, Hugh Grant, Robbie Williams, Nigel Olsson, Daniel Craig, just to name a few from the designer’s star-studded client list.

By supporting Cridland’s project you’ll also be supporting a change towards sustainable fashion, and you’ll be rewarded with the cutting out of GBP75 of pointless retail markups, so that your sweatshirt will be delivered to your door at just GBP55.