Interview: Truth Clothing Co

Describe Truth Clothing…
Gregg: I’d describe it as an alternative clothing brand for the conscious thinker. Opposite to the mainstream, opposite to what you see in the media today. When we first started we were just doing positive stuff, which we are still trying to do, but with our designs now, we’re trying to make people think as well. One of our new designs we are thinking about bringing out is Save The Bees, so Holly’s drawn a really intricate…
Holly: It’s like a bee, but in the middle it’s like a flower, and in the wings there’s geometry and everything. With the design, it’s only going to subtly say “save the bees”, nothing like “oh my god, they’re killing the bees!”. We don’t want to cut people off, we want people whether they’re into the mainstream, or the more alternative stuff to think “actually, I like it as a t-shirt”, regardless of whether I’m into that information or not. We’re just trying to use our clothes as a way to get people thinking - and it’s all mainly to do with local sources, it’s all independent, it’s not done in a sweat shop, it’s had a lot of heart and time put into it. 

What are the main ethical considerations behind your clothes?
Holly: The main one for us, considering we’re both vegetarian is that it can’t have any animal product in it at all, so we don’t use wool or animal tested products. All of our inks are water based so they’re not going to damage a river or pollute it, all the dyes we use are eco-friendy as well. We really want to find bamboo shirts and hemp - hemp’s the biggest one, cos hemp is so eco-friendly, it’s not being used enough really. But, we want to keep our stuff affordable as well, and with stuff like hemp, it’s like thirty pound for a T-shirt, and we’re not going to be able to do that, print on it as well, and keep it affordable.

We’ve done quite a few things with Ferox, we’re going to be collaborating with her. Our main slogan is “Nottingham based independent clothing for the conscious thinker”, but you could throw in there “ethically considerate. It’s really hard to find in the UK too, we could get it from abroad, but with the air miles and all the pollution from that, we’d be going against what we stand for. We need to find somebody out there that supplies hemp or bamboo. I’ve done a range of shorts, and I didn’t buy them, I just got old jeans that I found either myself or that were in charity shops, and converted ‘em into shorts, dyed them, used old different materials, and we put cool patches on the pockets. We’re just hippies undercover really.

Are there any other independents in Notts you’d love to work with?
Holly: The shop THC which is Canning Circus way, we’re going to speak to them - one of our designsis a big cannabis/hemp leaf, and in each leaf it says a different use for either cannabis or hemp, so it’s got unity, relaxation, but then it’s got fuel, textiles, paper, so with them being a hedge shop, you’re going to get the right customers in there.
Gregg: And underneath the leaf it says “illegal” with a question mark, so we call it our Illegal design.
Holly: It’s probably my favourite one.YouthOracle’s got one of them, so we’re working with musicians as well.
Gregg: All the ones we’re gonna be talking to are Non-Stop, THC, we did speak to Solar Eclipse in Lenton…
Holly: Anything alternative that gets people thinking outside the box. I’d gladly work with a tattooist for example, and do a tattoo design for a T-shirt. I want to work with Brinsley Animal Rescue Centre, I’ve been in touch with them, and they are completely non-profit, completely volunteer run, but they rescue animals - they’ve got mice, ponys, cows, it’s like a farm. We were on about donating 10% of each T-shirt to them, to help their funds, and put our money where our mouth is. So many people talk about things but don’t action it.
Gregg: I’m quite into BMXing, so we’ve got Non-Stop, one of our mates Dylan has suggested a couple of people who are going to be mentioned in magazines, so we need to get in touch with them. We met up with Ben Basford, pro BMXer from Arnold - he’s sponsored by numerous American and UK teams, so it’s nice for him to support a local company.

You were at Dot to Dot this year, and you’re also going to be at Splendour...
Gregg: So far we’ve done Dot to Dot, Dedicated, BrandBox, and loads of little stalls for markets and stuff like that.
Holly: I think Splendour is going to be brilliant, it’s proper Nottingham based, you’ve got your Nottingham artists - which is actually something that I’d like to do, ask some of them if they’d like to wear a T-Shirt of ours, and they can say “we’re here, this is a T-shirt by Truth Clothing, all Nottingham based” etc.
Gregg: There was someone who bought a load of T-Shirts off us at Dot to Dot, and we had no idea who she was, then one of our friends told us she was famous…
Holly: I had no idea, Billy JD Porter I think her name was. We got tagged in a photo on Instagram, and then my friend was like “you do know who that is don’t you?” She works for Channel 4 or T4 apparently, and she’s a model and all sorts and we couldn’t believe it.
Gregg: Her Tumblr says “British TV Presenter, DJ, writer, fashion enthusiast, model, journalist.”
Holly: “We kind of designed our stuff with 18-24 year olds in mind, but no, we’ve had forty year olds wearing it, sixteen year olds - I think it’s because of the message, so many people are interested in it.  It’s only recently I’ve started doing women’s stuff, cos we’ve tried to keep all our things unisex, to keep the message universal, but I just want to do a few crop tops haha.

What will you be taking down to Splendour?
Holly: Everything really.We’ve got a nice new banner done of Wollaton Park, so people can identify with it. It does say Nottingham based as well.
Gregg: Our tags say “hand dyed and printed in Nottingham.” So everybody fully knows it’s from here. When we’re looking for printers we’ll use ones that are local. There’s one on Aspley Lane called LionHeart Print that we use. At first we was cutting the stencils by hand - so our Ilegal design took about, three hours to cut the stencil, and I had to do that about seven times,
Holly: We’re still doing some hand printed stuff cos we want to have as much contact with our clothes as we can. But at the same time, if people want a little bit cheaper clothing, we can get it printed and done in bulk. Mimm is a really big one that we want to work with.
We’ve always gone into Mimm just as customers to look at the artwork, a friend of Gregg’s Adam Black did a lot of work for Mimm, and had a lot of his work in the shop.
Gregg: Adam and Heinz who were doing Shaka clothing - we wanted to collaborate with them, but unfortunately they’ve gone their separate ways now.
Holly: Adam’s art is incredible, so we use to pop in there a lot and I asked him out of curiousity “I know you’re a Prince’s Trust company. how did you do that?” and he went “you just ring them up and say can you give me some more information?” So we did a week course with the Prince’s Trust - the first thing was a business plan, where you see if it will actually work, if it’s the right thing to do, pros and cons of normal employment and self-employment. So we did this week course, met loads of people through that actually like hairdressers, make up artists, other clothing designers, and they also showed us how to do our tax and all that. Then we did our pitch, and they liked us, so we got a bit of funding off them, cos they’re helping kickstart independent stuff. Mimm probably doesn’t know this, but he was actually a really big part in getting us started.
Gregg: So yeah, props to Nathaniel!

Free worldwide shipping?
Holly: I’ve got cousins in Australia and they were like “People over here would love your stuff” but the biggest thing is the shipping It puts so many people off. We fold the T-shirts as small as we can, we use all recycled packaging - the only thing is it’s going in a plane, and that’s the only thing that really bugs me, you can’t pick a carbon neutral plane. It means we make a loss on some things, but because it’s coming such a long way, people tend to justify it by buying maybe a few T-shirts instead of just one.
Gregg: It’s free shipping for one thing, and if you order something else we just add one pound on.
Holly: My Australians were like “tye-die man, it’s so cool.”

Any last words?
Holly: Peace, love and unity man,
Gregg: A good quote for you - “be the change you wish to see in the world,”
Holly: Yeah, if you want to help independent things, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. - we went on Trent Sound - you’ve got to support your  independent radio stations, independent food, Living naturally, simply and happily is what we’re about.
Gregg: Shout out Ben Basford, YouthOracle, Ferox, Nat from Mimm, and LeftLion cos your newspaper is brilliant.

Truth Clothing website