Kemptwear is an Irish menswear brand founded by Christian Lawlor and Ingrid O'Connell. OTwo Editors Alice Keegan and Laura Molloy chatted to Christian and Ingrid about Kemptwear's journey, sustainable fashion, and how inspiration can be found all around us.
Christian Lawlor and Ingrid O’Connell are the founders of Irish menswear brand, Kemptwear. Lawlor grew up in Sandyford, Co Dublin, and attended Terenure College. In 2002, he moved into the Baggot Street area of Dublin, and worked from there in the menswear business. Lawlor worked “more as an agent” at first before branching out between 2011 and 2012.
O’Connell is from Bayside in Sutton, attended school in Santa Sabina, and “went to art college in Dun Laoghaire, I think it's IADT now,” she told OTwo. “From there, I spent a year or two as a graphic designer, and then went to work in Dunnes as an admin assistant in the buying office. From Dunnes, I spent a year in Penneys in the buying office as a buyer-designate - and you're doing the job, but they won't give you the money. And then I ended up in A-wear for quite a long time.”
O’Connell “was buying jackets and trousers and coats in A-wear in Peter O'Brien,” but after becoming a mother faced difficulties in her career. “Babies, and they just didn't go together with that sort of business, because women's fashion is very fast and it's very demanding”. After a few years of being at home with her kids, O'Connell worked “in Hickeys for a year, which [she] loved.”
Lawlor explained that he’s had “a few different levels” of enjoying fashion over the years. He told OTwo how he was drawn to the “daily variety of what you were doing. It wasn't a nine-to-five job,” he says. “You were travelling. You were meeting people . . . I didn't go to university. I went straight from school into working. And I knew I didn't want a nine-to-five job. I wanted something varied. [That variety] was satisfying me rather than being in what's called the ‘fashion business,’ because a lot of my customers I was dealing with, certainly they were not fashion shops. There were a lot of independent men's wear shops around the country. So they weren't ‘fashion’ fashion”.
“I came across Tumblr around 2014 or 15. It led me down this kind of introduction to a world of other stores around the globe and other brands. I've always been a very classic men's wear guy. What I wear is timeless - this might sound pretentious or cocky - I always think it looks great, but it never dates. If you ask me about fashion, what's in fashion at the moment, I really couldn't tell you, because I'm not in with the Kardashians or this sort of thing,” he continues.
Lawlor talked about how discovering Tumblr led him to a new way of experiencing fashion. “There was a store called The Armoury in Hong Kong. And it opened up my eyes to this whole other world of men's wear outside of Ireland and outside of the independent men's wear stores in Ireland who were really focused on their own little bubble”.
When asked what were the biggest challenges of setting up Kemptwear, Lawlor replied, “I suppose the first obvious one was we did it during COVID . . . The very first factory we used was China because Europe was pretty much closed as far as mills and production were concerned. So a contact of mine in the industry pointed me in the direction of a lady called Wendy over in China, in Hong Kong. China had opened up again and they were working pretty much back to full capacity”.
He added, “it was a real risk. When you're working with China for the first time like that, they want 50% of the money upfront for when they purchase the fabric. This is before the fabric is made, let alone even being put together as a garment. And then they want the further 50%, the balance of the money, before it leaves the port in Hong Kong. Then there's a further 30 days of transportation time.” He continued, “You've paid out all the money. You don't know what you're getting, really. And it's going to still be another 30 days before you receive it, if you receive it at all.” Kempt is now produced and manufactured in Portugal.
Lawlor told OTwo how, “there's constant challenges . . . We're supposed to have received new shirts today, three new styles. And with the weather last week out at sea, with those storms, unfortunately it's pushed back now till next week”.
At the time of interviewing Lawlor, Kemptwear’s first popup shop was being arranged for later in the week. We asked Lawlor and O’Connell what the process of arranging such a big moment for the brand was like. “Where it was very interesting to us is being a digital brand. We've got it this far. There's still loads and loads to do. [If you were] to ask me how it's happened, I don't know. We've been accepted globally,” Lawlor tells us.
“We ship weekly to the US, to Australia. There's a package that went to Hong Kong there today. With DHL, the UK is huge,” he adds.
In terms of how the pop-up shop came about, Lawlor said they, “just reached out one day, not knowing the answer and said, ‘look, Gavin, would you be interested in doing a bit of a pop-up later in the year?’ And obviously we left it to this time to November because you're getting into that, you know, they call it the golden quarter of the year”.
We asked Lawlor the reason for avoiding current menswear trends. He told OTwo that there are a few reasons for this creative choice. “Number one, I don't think I'm qualified to have enough trends. I'm not a follower of fashion. I also believe that if it's something as good, it should last a long, long time. It shouldn't go out of style. You think of a Rolex Submariner watch or an Oxford shirt, they're timeless pieces”.
He also explained that from a financial point of view, “if you're in very seasonal and fashion categories on products and your brand is like that, if you don't hit the mark and get yourself through in a certain amount of time, you can forget about it. It means you're going to have to heavily discount the stock.”
“We hear all the time about these mountains of clothes waste and everything, but in the textile industry, certainly. And it's because the reality is there's too much stuff out there. So, we chose to do products, colours, and styles that will last 12 months of the year. Our denim shirt, you can wear it in winter - well, I wear it in winter, and I wear it in summer. The white shirt you wear in winter, you wear it in summer. There's never a seasonality,” Lawlor explained.
We asked Lawlor what his favorite piece from Kemptwear is. “We do a blue Bengal stripe Oxford shirt. When I prepare one of them . . . just the noise, this is going to sound strange, the noise when I'm taking one of those out of a bag to wrap it up and put it in the gift box, even the noise from the tissue and the fabric mixing with the tissue, it always just sounds very [good] to me. “From a sales point of view, I'd have to say our best-selling shirts are the denims, the light one and the dark one. But for me, [it’s] that Bengal Oxford,” he adds.
If you buy as good as you can and then learn how to look after it properly, wash them properly, ironing - as much as everybody hates it, it does rejuvenate the fabric again, and it flattens all the fibres down . . . If you look after things, even cheaper things will last you longer.
After moving on to the topic of college fashion, we asked how Lawlor would advise a college student who's looking to upgrade their wardrobe. “I suppose even the word, a college student, that always invokes somebody who doesn't have a lot of money, might have student fees and is trying to do a part-time job, and rent. So I suppose they'd be looking to make their euros stretch as far as they can.”
“So I'd buy the best quality because you'll get longevity out of it. And find a timeless style that you don't have to be changing all the time. You shouldn't obviously overstretch yourself to have something and run up credit card bills or whatever, but if you sometimes just pay a little bit more for something, it can be totally worth it.”
O’Connell added, “If you buy as good as you can and then learn how to look after it properly, wash them properly, ironing - as much as everybody hates it, it does rejuvenate the fabric again, and it flattens all the fibres down . . . If you look after things, even cheaper things will last you longer.”
Lawlor then went on to describe the origins of the brand name ‘Kemptwear’. “Confidence is a huge thing. I don’t think you realise when you’re younger that you can do a hell of a lot more than you give yourself credit for. It's something I would preach to anyone, just believe in yourself. My parents said ‘put your mind to it and you can do anything,’ - it’s not as easy as that, but I think confidence in yourself to be able to go and do something is hugely important.” Lawlor then noted that “it's something that I think both myself and Ingrid only found in ourselves through starting Kempt.”
Reflecting on when they “didn’t believe [they] had the ability and the flair and the creativity to launch a brand” they went to their Local Enterprise Office and got a grant, then obtained a loan from the Bank of Ireland. From there, they went to a branding agency in Dublin. Lawlor described the process of researching agencies as “a minefield of who to find and who to pick”. “They all promised the world . . . they’ll set you off to be the best brand. You know, you're bigger than Nike or McDonalds.”
Confidence is a huge thing. I don’t think you realise when you’re younger that you can do a hell of a lot more than you give yourself credit for. It's something I would preach to anyone, just believe in yourself.
Reflecting on the whole experience, “To cut a long story short, we were finding out that there was a lot of smoke and mirrors with them and stuff for that. And they'd done a couple of things like naming - naming the brand was something that we paid for. Every name that came back to us, they weren't great names anyway, but again, stock was being produced and things were moving on. So we needed a name… but we weren’t loving them”.
“They wanted an Irish feel to it, that sort of thing. There was one or two that did come up and we said, okay, that’s not bad, let's run with that. But anytime we brought it to the patent lawyers they said, ‘guys, absolutely no way, you cannot use that name.’ So back to the branding agency.” After still struggling to settle on a suitable name, they felt, “Time is really ticking. You can imagine, we have garments in work. We need labels on those garments. The garments have been shipped without labels on them. And we still have no name.”
Lawlor stated that there were, “another couple of things [happened] and we decided to pull the plug on this agency. We said, ‘guys, we're not working with you anymore.’ So we parted ways and it was a bit of a stressful time, but we, again, still had no name.” Eventually, a friend of Lawlor’s was living in Paris with his girlfriend and “they were sitting there one Saturday morning doing a crossword, I think in the Irish Times, and he texts me from Paris and he says, Christian, I’m doing the Irish doing the crossword here with Emily. One of the clues is something on the lines of like to be dishevelled or untidy, and the answer was unkempt. And he says, if you can be unkempt, can you be kempt?’”
“So the short answer is, it came from a crossword at a kitchen table one Saturday morning in Paris.”
Kemptwear references the golden age of Hollywood in a lot of their designs. When asked if this was something they had always been interested in and influenced by, Lawlor responded “I just think when things look cool, they look cool. I don't know if you're familiar with John Barry, the composer. They were playing a lot of his stuff yesterday on LyricFM, and one of the ones that played was the theme tune from Out of Africa.” A film with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Lawlor proceeded to watch the film that evening - “The style and that turn of the century [look], that's an era that I just love . . . That sort of relaxed, elegant look. I can see it in the movies. I see it sometimes on people. You don't see it so much in Ireland - actually, we're getting better at dressing - but for me to sit in an international hub in Europe, like an airport in Dusseldorf or in Paris and watch the world go by... I love it. I love people watching and stuff like that. So inspiration comes from many different places.”
When asked whether sustainability and climate awareness is something that they would be conscious of within their work, O'Connell replied, “I think coming from a women's wear background, I don't have the stomach for it anymore because it's constant. You're constantly feeding a beast, and in men's wear, and certainly for Kempt, it's much more considered - you buy better and you wear it for longer. You look after it, you keep it. So in terms of sustainability, that's kind of the route we chose to go down. We are looking at different fabrics and stuff to keep that sentiment going, but certainly for the paper packaging and anything like that, we strive to use recycled [materials] as much as we can. But clothing is a very unsustainable business.”
“It's really difficult to find the right places for prices people are willing to pay. It can be quite difficult, but we are conscious of it. One of the big things we do, and we strive to keep this going is, the production is Portuguese, but also the milling of the fabric is also Portuguese.” They used a factory nearby and therefore “you're not talking about like air miles, we don't bring fabric in from the far East and then produce it in, in Portugal and then fly it somewhere else. It's generally by road and it's all pretty local.” Their carbon footprint is down and all their packaging is recyclable and there is an option on their website for reduced packaging”. They noted that a lot of the Irish orders ask for reduced packaging, particularly in comparison with the rest of Europe.
It's really difficult to find the right places for prices people are willing to pay. It can be quite difficult, but we are conscious of it. One of the big things we do, and we strive to keep this going is, the production is Portuguese, but also the milling of the fabric is also Portuguese.
Lawlor and O’Connell were then asked whether there has ever been a moment or a time in their careers where they felt blocked creatively. They mentioned the added stress of looking after and keeping on top of social media, particularly Instagram; “You're like, I need to feed this beast. And that's what it is. It's a beast. And sometimes you have to say, no, I'm just not going to get caught up in all that. So there are days where you might be creatively blocked for content creation . . . It's important to sort of say, look, if an order comes in, it comes in. If it doesn't, it's not the end of the world.”
On a more positive note, the pair also then mentioned some of the highlights of establishing Kemptwear so far.
“Any sale we get is like, you're clapping each other on the back. Any sale, we're grateful for. Anybody taking the time to leave a comment, like, ‘oh, I love your shirt,’ or, ‘my wife said I look great in this shirt,’ anything like that is still a bit of a novelty for us. Getting positive feedback is always nice. It gives you a boost to keep on going, because sometimes you do have to take it day by day.” Pointing to a particular moment, they recalled when they were approached by Brown Thomas who found them through social media. “[We thought] we must be doing something right.”
Aside from their upcoming pop-up shop, they have many plans for the future including rolling out different product categories, doing collaborations with different people, and the “obvious one”, finding a small retail unit. Finally, giving advice for young people looking to get involved in starting up a business, they highlighted the role of confidence. “You can do it. And you can learn.” Lawlor stated; “I mean, certainly we haven't hit world domination yet, but it's got to a stage where it has worked. No one can say that this has not worked. If it was to go in the morning, for whatever reason, it's worked. And I would be proud to put my face to that.”