When I started to create PROJEC'63 Apparel, I didn't set out to build a brand. I already had a smaller business I was running on the side of my full time job. There wasn't an initial plan to start from scratch on a new idea and a new business.
But one night, I had a thought. I wanted to set out to remember someone properly.
The most important person in my life was born in 1963. I kept coming back to that. Not because it was a good name for a brand, or because it sounded like it meant something, but because it actually did mean something, to me specifically. It wasn't a trend I'd spotted or a gap I'd noticed in the market. It was just a birth year, and everything that came with it.
Since the day she died, I've seen it everywhere. PJ63 on car registration plates. On wine corks. On notice boards. 1963 on boats, on t-shirts, in places it had no reason to be. I don't know what to make of that, if I'm honest. But I stopped being able to ignore it and it started to feel like a push towards something new. A new chapter, a new focus.
She wasn't the kind of person who's remembered for what she owned.
She was remembered for how she made people feel. She had this way of making complete strangers feel comfortable around her, almost straight away, without anyone really knowing why. She made people laugh. She listened without judgement. People just left conversations with her feeling a bit lighter than when they'd arrived.
I've thought about that a lot while I've been putting this together. What do you actually do with a feeling like that? It's not something you can put on a hanger or photograph for a product page. But I think you can build something around it, if you're willing to take your time with it, and if you care more about getting it right than getting it out quickly.
So that's what PROJEC'63 is, at the core of it. The '63 is her. Everything else I'm trying to build is really just an attempt to carry forward the things she stood for — warmth, comfort, generosity, that kind of timelessness that doesn't need updating every season.
I want to be upfront about something, though. This isn't about recreating her, and I'm not trying to. That's not really possible, and it's not the point. It's more about making sure the things she represented don't just stay as memories, but end up in something people can actually hold, wear, and keep coming back to.
That's a big part of why comfort matters so much to me here, and I don't just mean how something feels against your skin. Comfort isn't just a product feature. It's the entire customer experience. It's a fabric that's still doing its job in a year's time. It's a fit that doesn't need explaining to anyone. It's not having to wonder whether what you bought was actually considered, or just another thing that'll fall apart.
I'm not trying to build the biggest brand out there. I'd rather build one that's still true to itself in five years, in ten years and one that people trust.
If PROJEC'63 ever becomes something people talk about, I want that to be the reason why. Not because everyone recognised the logo, but because it was built on something people could actually relate to.
I'll use this Journal to keep writing about that as we go, the decisions behind the product, the reasons behind some of the choices, the bits that don't really fit into a product description. Some of it will be about fabric and construction. Some of it will just be honest.
But it all starts here, with her. Everything else gets built on top of that.
Thank you for being part of it from the start.
