Cathal 'Folk' McAteer Interview

oki-ni's Beth Vincent talks to Cathal McAteer, Head Designer and Founder of Folk, about the label’s beginnings, its ‘anti-branding’ aesthetic, future plans for new stores, womenswear and beyond ...

Beth | Cathal, There's a lot of information out there about the history of Folk but in your own words what do you consider to be the big milestones in the brand's development so far?

Cathal | Probably the beginning of it was when we were approached by a Japanese company to do Folk. Folk started via Japan and someone actually asking me to do men's clothing, because at the time I was working in Japan with a women's brand designing. The guy there asked me when I was going to do menswear and that's how it started.

What was the women's brand?

Zakee Shariff. Distributors from Fukuoka had Stussy shops, and they worked with Futura, YMC, Maharishi, then Zakee and subsequently Folk. From that they allowed it to start quicker than I had planned because financially they pay very well and the UK shops don't. So that allowed us to start quicker, which was really nice.

And after that?

And then after that the brand just developed. We quickly got really nice customers but like anything it's really hard to produce great quality and do that successfully, especially when you're doing it on a shoe string. So I think when my partner Fraser Shand joined the company that was a big moment. We then had a real balance between the people in the company; from business brains to ideas – and I think ideas are quite cheap. We've all got ideas but to actually be able to follow them through I think was a big turning point. The balance on the ship felt much steadier, there was someone else to bounce ideas off then and to tell me when I was being a knob. And then the shop, that was 4 years ago maybe now, was a massive turning point as we really got to know our own product and people saw what we wanted to do. So it began with the very inception of Folk, then the inclusion of such a great business head and then the store really kicked it on again.

Any plans to go back Japan then ...?

We'd love to. We're just waiting for the right opportunity. I think Japan is an extremely complicated country for business, there are certain ways of doing things and we need to wait for the right opportunity. We were offered a chance to run a shop-in-shop for 6 months a little while ago but the company had to pull out. We'll just wait for someone to come and knock on our door, sooner rather than later I hope. I'd love to get back there, the stores are so beautiful. Really meticulous, really well kept. Sometimes people say Folk is maybe a little bit too like other Japanese brands, not exactly but the detailing and the extra bits – maybe that's from when I was travelling in Japan and we started there, I was probably influenced by the meticulous eye for detail.

Sometimes I think we won't have success in Japan because we're not needed there. Maybe we just need to get out there, open a store to make a splash and say 'We're nice guys. Come and buy our stuff'.

So what's the next stage in Folk's development going to be.

In the third week of July we open our new store, two doors from the first one. That's really exciting. It's a women's store, a new thing for us. We're going to do some collaborations with an existing brand who are going to do some Folk clothes for us. I can't say who just yet but there are a couple. And we're also starting to make our own women's garments specifically. We make men's garments in women's sizes that they buy but some women don't have the confidence to put on a guy's shirt and really style it, so we're going to make it easier - add a feminine edge to it.

How would you describe the brand aesthetic then?

We've always tried to make quite normal shapes, nothing too extravagant you know and then just giving little bits of 'detail happiness', like comfort parts, a nice button, leather patches, just little bits that can be hidden and taken away.

We've been quite anti-branding, that's why it was very hard for us to print t-shirts or put our name on top of a garment – it never felt natural, in fact it always feels kind of dumb.

Do you have any personal favourites from the S/S collection that's online at the moment?

I like the waistcoat a lot, the navy one with the chambray back. Since the very first collection we've made the chambray shirt and it's one of my favorite fabrics. It's really annoying that it's so on-trend just now because we'll put it to bed after this season and not do any chambray shirts for a while - everyone's doing it. But I like the mixture of using that in the waistcoat, it's a really strong piece.

There have been developments in outerwear pieces from S/S10; everyone loves the rain mac with the exchangeable hoods – is there an equivalent for A/W?

There's a really fun one for A/W. It's much better actually, because we've taped the seams and we made our own multi-coloured square tape. One of the biggest things we do is constantly re-work styles that we have already done - that's part of what we do. We make them better and better and better, just changing them slightly because people like what they know, it's simple.

So how does that process work? Going back and pulling pieces from archive collections, how do you decide what to work on again?

The business side dictates that a bit, the boring side, but we're in the business of selling garments – so in reality, if something's a best seller we repeat it. But at the same time, from the creative side you just feel drawn to try to improve certain garments because you didn't make them good enough the first time around. I think that we're never really that satisfied because you've only got a small amount of time to make something work. We feel that we keep improving, but between the two of us we like to improve all of the time.

Details and finishes are really at the heart of Folk's aesthetic. How does the process of sourcing craftspeople to produce hand knits, or finding amazing materials work?

Well it works much easier than it ever has because we're now big enough for people to want our money, so they want to sell us things and make things with us. When we first started we could only buy basic fabric so we had to make it into something so through that desire to make really interesting garments, we could only use nice accessories. We used to have quite a few friends that would collect old buttons and bits of tape and I used to go to the market in France and buy lots of old ribbons, just to try and make a basic fabric sing a little bit louder. And so, that approach to seeing what you can do by being really resourceful actually brings us to the stage that we are at now where our details are very strong. We're quite proud of that and we work really hard at that. I think that's something that started because we had to do something, and now it's become part of our make-up.

The 'People' cardigan's a piece everyone loves, where did that come from?

The 'People' cardigan really came from an old piece of knitwear we just came across. The guy and girl holding hands, well – we’re a bit soppy you know, we’re into people being happy and shit, no skulls and cross bones. It just seemed simple and we thought it might not do particularly well but we stopped it for a season and people started complaining! We’ll always bring that back now– it’s a bit mellow and nice. Last season we made it in Peru so the style of knitwear went with the actual graphic. Then we produced it for Bestival - we make cardigans for the owners to give away to their staff at the end of the festival, we put a badge on saying Bestival or something. We’ve done it every year since the festival started. They’re old friends so we’re happy to support, and we get to go down and we have a Folk tent at the festival, have a couple of beers ...

We didn’t realize you did that, cool.

What's the story behind all of the archive fabrics?

That's kind of simple actually, because we found a factory in Portugal to work with, which used to be massive. It's got its own train running through it; its own river running through it; it dyes things in the river. It used to be huge and thousands of people worked there, but now it's down to 500 people or so. They have these books of all of the fabrics that they've made over the years which we found hidden away. When we started going through them, we were just like – this is so cool. Like the stuff that they made in '87 for Ralph Lauren… We were like, 'Can you not let anyone else see this?' We haven't copied any of the fabrics, but we have decided to look at what they used to make a long time ago, and then re-colour them and change the designs. It's a bit of a psychedelic kind of chic. It's a bit odd and we're going to keep developing that because it's fun, but it's also difficult to imitate because I imagine that some people wouldn't have the patience to develop their own checks. But it is hit-and-miss because we have had a couple of bad ones where we've spent the money on the fabric already.

So is there going to be a lot of that in the A/W collection?

Yes, that's going to be an ongoing thing that we do with that factory.

I actually think that's one of the hardest things in the business, to find the key resources that are exciting instead of just going down the normal channels.

Is there anything else that we can expect from A/W?

We've bought really beautiful fabric from a famous mill in the Veneto region above Treviso in Italy, it's called Paulette, and these guys still dye and wash their fabric in big wooden vats. It's all really hand loomed and it's beautiful. They have an archive of their collection and we've made a couple of coats in their stuff, really expensive fabric but it's gorgeous! We wanted to add more levels to what we do, so that was a new thing.

In what respect?

We wanted to add more levels; selling cheaper things alongside more expensive things, better things, different things. It's just interesting making product. We found this fabric and it was really expensive, but then we asked the minimums and it was only 60 meters, so we only needed to make 25 garments. It's really nice finding a resource that works for us in that way. So, albeit there's going to be 25 jackets at £600, which is much more that we have ever charged, but there's only 25 out there.

What else should we be keeping an eye out for next season?

The hats are really good, really good development is happening there. We've never had a decent manufacturer and now we've found the manufacturer that can make the hats that we want. They are making it really detailed, mixing the fabrics with the archive checks, and nice buttons, and then making them at the right price. We've had hats in the past that cost £125 and no one is going to walk into a shop and spend that on a hat. We're making clothes for people that we know, so it's got to be at a good price.

And our t-shirts I think are strong, we've now gained the trust of a really nice manufacturer in China who has made for a lot of very well known brands. It took a while for him to like us and now he's allowing us to develop a lot of things and use a specific yarn that we like to use in our knitwear.

Why is that special?

It's called berroco, and it's the same stuff that we use in all of our pima cottons and our knitwear. We've also put it into the t-shirts and that means that we get an exact match. Also the colours are grainy, like a mélange as opposed to solid and flat. So we're trying to get really nice depth, colour and texture, and make the whole collection look really rich. We're looking at how you make a t-shirt special because a t-shirt can be just a t-shirt. We have to look at what we do best and try to give it some of that love - and it's come out really well. The winter collection is the biggest season that we've had on t-shirts. It's really become an important category. I think it's been three years that we have been doing t-shirts and every season we want to throw them in the bin. They're ok and we can do a nice striped t-shirt, but when we were printing tees the outcome wasn't great.

It's hard to find your own voice when you're really particular. Another hard thing is to be patient, we all have ideas and not every idea is going to be good, so you have to be really honest and say when something's not good enough.

Back to what you were saying about producing crockery, is that something that is in the pipeline?

No, that was just off the top of my head, there are just a lot of things that we want to make. We've had requests from different people. A furniture maker has asked us to do furniture just because we work with him for our stores. He was saying that every time we produce something, it seems really good and our ideas match so who knows. But

I think that we need to concentrate on the most important things and that's making good garments, good shoes and improving on those.


There are lots of opportunities coming up, but you've got to weigh that up to whether you can devote the proper amount of time to make it work well. There's tons of stuff that we want to do in the future, but we'll just have to wait and see what's what.