We didn’t start out
as a brand.
For fourteen years we made varsity jackets for everybody except ourselves. College Classics is the first one with our own name in the collar.
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2011
First jacket cut
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One factory
Nothing outsourced
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44
Colourways at launch
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England
Cut and sewn here
A workshop, a pattern, and one very heavy roll of wool.
We started in 2011 making jackets to order. Universities first, then clubs, then film wardrobes and companies you’d recognise if we were allowed to name them. Every jacket custom. Every jacket a wait of six to eight weeks.
Somewhere in those fourteen years the pattern stopped changing. We had found the shoulder, the length, the way the sleeve turns. It is the same pattern we cut today.
Everybody kept asking the same thing. Can I just buy one, without the letters, without the wait?
So we made the version people kept asking for.
Same cloth, same cutters, same factory. No chenille letters, no minimum order, no eight-week lead time. Finished, boxed, on a shelf.
The only decision left is the one that was always the fun part: which body, which sleeve. That is where the forty-four came from.
SHOP ALL
Heavy cloth, real leather, and nobody rushing.
The body is 24oz melton wool, the weight American letterman jackets used before the mills went lighter. The sleeves are full-grain cowhide, uncorrected and uncoated, so they scuff and soften instead of peeling.
Everything is cut and sewn by the same people who have been building our made-to-order jackets since day one. It is slower than sending it abroad. That is rather the point.
SHOP ALL- READY TO WEAR
College Classics
Forty-four colourways, sizes XS to 3XL, £245. In stock and out the door in two to three working days.
SHOP THE JACKET - MADE TO ORDER
Custom & team orders
Your own colours, chenille letters, embroidery, team names. That side of the business is still running exactly as it always has.
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