Question:  say you see one of our designs that you think is really cool.  Will the small flag on the left sleeve stop you buying and wearing it?  Some of you will be put off…but not everybody, we hope.

Hopefully, enough of you will buy into our “Wear the World!” mission and, in so doing, help to foster a sense of global unity and an acceptance of fellow Man - irrespective of race, religion or belief.

But this wasn't the starting point.  It's how NATIONAL identi-T® evolved.  Here’s what happened:

Back in April 09, Alex (founding partner), had a dream.  In this dream he was asking himself why, despite being reasonably patriotic and an enthusiastic supporter of the national teams, he had never once worn, or come close to wearing, a replica England shirt.  This dream seemed to offer some hope - the issue wasn’t a reluctance to display national pride, but rather to do so in a different way, in a way that felt 'right'. Perhaps if the 'right' shirt was available, he might wear it…

On waking, a growing sense of excitement and opportunity joined the tea and toast in the pit of his stomach.  He felt he was onto something.  Surely, he was not alone:  there must be other people in England, in the UK, in the World who had similar feelings about the lack of choice when it came to demonstrating national pride.

So what did he do?  He took himself off to the pub to ponder.  But, alone he was not!  He got a couple of his buddies to join him.  Enter stage: Gregor Jackson and Caio Buzzolini.   Not only did he value their opinion…but if they bought into the idea, they would be well-placed to execute the vision.

So, did they think it was a good idea?  Well...in a word, “yesh” (a pint or two had been enjoyed!).  Gregor and Caio were in full agreement that a collection of well-designed national T shirts, designed to look great with jeans, was indeed a fine idea -  and one worthy of pursuit.

So we discussed how different countries might be depicted.  Lively, slurred and at times, incoherent, debate ensued...

On one hand, there are national colours and traditional insignia.  The challenge was how to take established, ingrained ideas and re-present them in a fresher, more contemporary light - and so was born the nationali-T.

On the other hand, there are iconic images, themes and references - unmistakeably  identifiable with particular countries that distill their very essence - Brazil?  Flip-flops... Carnival...Pele;  France?  Garlic...Berets...Baguette;  America?  Baseball...Burgers...Cowboys.  But here’s the thing:   despite being such an obvious way to depict countries, the idea had never really translated itself onto national shirts in a meaningful way and under a single brand.  And so was born the identi-T.

We arranged to re-convene several weeks later.  Gregor was to work through some early design thoughts with his design ace:  step forward Chris Poulton.  Pints in hand, we watched as GJ opened his big book of design and Lo!  O beautiful day!  O wonderful life!  What treasures were contained therein!

Chris had done a fantastic job!  And this is where it got interesting - we wanted to wear all of them!

So this was when we first contemplated an idea which is now the central mission of the business:  could fantastic design persuade people to wear national shirts of countries other than that in which they were born?

It was the purpose that our fledgling enterprise needed - the heart giving life to its body.  And it gave rise to our battle cry, “Wear the World!”

It’s a pretty cool idea and it made sense to us.  What remains to be seen is whether it makes sense to you.  Because if it does, we could have people walking around the world spreading a message of global unity and acceptance of and respect for fellow Man – irrespective of race, religion or belief.

From then on, things just started to ‘flow’ and take on a life their own.  We were now talking about being a global force for good, with this idea of global unity being at the heart of what we stand for -   and that’s really how we 'stumbled on' the concept of the uni-T.

The uni-T might be described as our ‘anchor’ product.   It underlines our raison d’etre.  It's a single design for One World aimed at the Global Citizen and embraces the idea that we are united more by our similarities than we are divided by our differences.
So that we/you can support the amazing work of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), we bring this to you at cost price in the hope that you make a generous donation directly to them.

MSF is wonderfully non discriminatory in that it provides humanitarian aid to those in need, whenever and wherever in the World they might be. This philosophy is very much in step with our own and, as such, they were an obvious choice.

So, let's get this show on the road and have some fun!