Ultraviolet Fractal

Model wearing Ultraviolet Fractal - Organic Streetwear for those unbroken.

When I drew Ultraviolet in the early 2000’s, I was wrestling with a lot of the same concerns as I am now. Not because my life hasn’t moved, it has, but the global issues I was thinking about at 17, haven’t.

Unless you count backwards as movement.

Creator or Destroyer

It’s about wrestling with the existential and where you place judgement. If you fix it here, does it break there? How do you know anything? How do you know what you don’t know? Are we creating or destroying? Earth or Purgatory? Are we alive or dead? That’s what I thought about at 17 – read into that what you will.

I’ve just finished Ultraviolet Fractal

The next chapter in the story. It’s the twenty year later version of the same questions. It’s the start of Ultraviolet as a character, and each new iteration, is an exploration of that story.  Organic streetwear for those unbroken. Still building, still trying, still fighting. Still figuring it out.

Textile investigation

Olive and water - the design problem in one image

Not the sleuth, cat burglar kind of investigating. The kind where you realise you have been staring into a screen and not blinked for fifteen minutes. It’s also the term you land on when you were trying to think of something Inspector Gadget related and can only recall the rude versions.

Keeping you dry

Isn’t just challenging, it’s often toxic. Waterproofing is an active area of innovation and because of this, many brands that are in the business of keeping you dry have their own R&D, working on new materials, new methods. This is where textile innovation, waterproof fabrics, and sustainable streetwear start to collide.

Oil and water

I’m looking at this from the perspective of dye and print, and how textiles behave in real garments. Finding something that holds dye, specifically when it comes to translating artwork to garment, that is also waterproof, is a bit like oil and water. 

Enter the Manchester textile industry

I know, I know, cotton. Honestly, I keep coming back to it, regardless of where I go.  Ventile was developed by the Shirley Institute in Manchester, England. A dense, weatherproof cotton fabric that works without synthetic coatings. It’s a long story involving the need for a new type of flight suit for the RAF. But it resulted in PFAS free weatherproof material.

Materially aligned

I could list many more examples of innovative design like Colorifix, using engineered micro-organisms that create dyes, replacing what has traditionally been a heavy chemical process.  It’s fascinating, and it’s all feeding into the development of the designer range. Even if it makes ‘the’ list of what not to use. It’s already fed into our core range, and why we chose GOTS certified organic cotton. And it’s why we print the way we do.

Go-Go…textile innovation

I know I’m not making flight suits. Designing something that lasts, without relying on harmful materials or processes, is crucial. If you’re going to make it, how does it break down, how does it return, that is where this list becomes, shorter. For now.

Built through circular systems.
Shop the Core range.

Sustainable Streetwear Isn’t a Trend; It’s a Systems Problem.

Systems don’t change themselves.

Sustainability is being treated as a consumer responsibility instead of a system responsibility.

We’ve outsourced accountability downward, to customers, to workers, to suppliers, while profit stays safely at the top. It’s infuriating. And it’s everywhere.

Sustainability talk is booming while quality collapses.

Choice is increasing. Longevity is not. You don’t need to be a designer to notice it. Groceries shrink. Clothes thin. Products fail faster. That contradiction isn’t accidental, it’s engineered. And it shouldn’t be acceptable.

We are not at the end of a solution. We’re at the start of a very long curve.

Sustainability fails the moment it asks the weakest part of the chain to carry the most responsibility.

Fast platforms. Endless drops. “Capsule wardrobe essentials” released weekly. Externalised costs dressed up as innovation. Profit-first systems with zero consideration for product lifecycles, and even less for people.

This is why Mongrel Logic exists as an outlier.

When I first sketched the Designer range, the goal wasn’t to make a cap. It was to make something that lasts a lifetime, with a traceable lifecycle and no future landfill. Not just something you wear, but something that rewires how you think about what you wear. That thinking is already being tested quietly in what we’re building now.

True sustainability isn’t boring.

Yes, it can be slow. Yes, it can be unsexy. It involves trade-offs. It involves constraints. It involves admitting what you don’t control.

But working inside limits isn’t a compromise, it’s a test. A test of whether new ways of thinking, working, and creating are possible without pushing profit upwards and damage cascading down.

Most systems won’t even try. I will.

Logic Descends: The Origin Story of the Second Design.

It was 2002. I was 23. Aw. Or Aaah. Not sure which.

A night of Skull Monkeys & Resident Evil

I was housesitting and spent an evening drawing, playing Skull Monkeys, and watching the first Resident Evil. That’s when I drew Logic Descends. She didn’t have a name then. I drew two versions that night. I kept both

Enter: Attempted Burglary at 3AM

Much later, I was woken up by the sound of a crowbar hitting a metal gate. I switched the lights on. They ran. Cops came. Life went on.
Make of that what you will.

Logic Descends… or Angel?

You decide. When I revived her for Mongrel Logic, I kept her mostly as she was, her face is new, the animalistic stance, the sharp energy, the slightly feral wings, they’re the same.

She’s a piece of my early creative DNA.

2002 Time Capsule

This is me from the same year (and my brother); oversized jumper, corduroy’s (I know) too big. Basically… still me.

Some things change. Some things don’t. And sometimes, the things you made decades ago find their way back home.
More designs (and more stories from the vault) coming soon.