Clothes With A 30-Year Guarantee

The fashion industry has just about as short an attention span as the best of us. Always looking forward to the next exciting modern update, fashion trends often become piles of clothes hidden at the back of our wardrobe or donated to charities to make space for more.

It doesn’t help too that we’re easily able to get access to trendy fashion without bursting our wallets. The idea that fast fashion is relatively cheap makes it easily dispensable.

Enter Tom Cridland. Started in 2014, the London-based brand comes with an unprecedented guarantee: Tom Cridland clothes will last you for 30 years.

“The 30-year guarantee period was decided together with my suppliers who have been making sweatshirts for over 50 years. This is a conservative and not overly ambitious length of time for us to pledge that garments of our quality will last,’ explained Thomas Cridland, chief executive officer for his namesake brand.

Tom Cridland didn’t start off the bat as a sustainable clothing brand. In its infancy, the brand specialised in making trousers in a variety of colours and fabrics based on a signature cut that it still does till today. Sustainability only came into the forefront after the brand took off and began dressing the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Craig. It was then that the 30-Year Sweatshirt was born.

Tom Cridland is quick to challenge anyone who thinks that this is simply a marketing gimmick. Each and every piece of the 30-Year line (it now consists of jackets, T-shirts, Christmas sweatshirts and the original sweatshirts) comes with a 30-year warranty. The entire line is built to last but should anything happen to it over the course of 30 years, you’re able to send it back to Tom Cridland for mending and they’ll return it with repair and return postage costs fully covered. Stains however, are not covered under the terms of the guarantee.

The brand’s bold claim on its quality is based on its commitment to ensuring that the right fabrics and techniques are used. “The sweatshirts, t-shirts and jackets are made out of luxury fabric that we source from Biella in Northern Italy, and are now crafted in both Parma, Italy and Serra da Estrela, Portugal. Technological advances have allowed us to develop a special treatment to protect the garments against shrinking,” explains Thomas.

Considering the 30-year guarantee, the clothes are reasonably priced. The line starts at £45 for T-shirts and capped at £300 for jackets. But of course, these are clothes that are meant to be basic essential pieces in your wardrobe and stand the test of fickle fashion trends.

Is sustainable fashion going to be the next fashionable thing? Thomas certainly hopes so. “Tom Cridland is now a brand that I not only want to make value-for-money luxury clothing accessible for people; I want it to be the world’s number one sustainable fashion brand and for it to make sustainability fashionable in itself,” he expresses.

It’s a possible future too. Fast fashion brands like H&M and those under the Inditex portfolio have started embarking on more sustainable ways of producing clothes than what they’re typically known for.

Right now, Tom Cridland is moving forward and doing more to expose consumers to sustainable fashion. The brand just recently launched its brand new website and will be opening up a womenswear category sometime in November. A charity project is in the works too. Tom Cridland is teaming up with some of the world’s biggest rock stars to produce The Real Music Collection in order to help musicians in need; a cause that is close to Thomas’ heart (his band The Tomicks, has just finished recording their first album at the famed The Village studio in Los Angeles).

Tom Cridland is available online with free worldwide shipping.