Conkers: Where the Village Green Meets the Cutting Room.

In the world of menswear, a brand website usually means glossy photography, carefully lit lookbooks, and just enough cryptic copy to make you think you’re buying into a secret society. Conkers swerves all that. Open their homepage and you’re dropped in the middle of a postcard-worthy English village - pub, post office, and Maypole dancers in mid-twirl. It’s not twee nostalgia for urbanites; it’s a manifesto. The message? Slow down. Talk to your neighbours. Shop from people you actually know.

Founded in London in 2021 by Oliver Warner - whose CV reads like a greatest hits playlist of modern menswear (think Studio Nicholson, Our Legacy, C.P. Company) - Conkers is a deliberate step away from the churn of trend cycles. Warner’s inspiration comes not from runway shows but from the factories themselves: the sound of sewing machines, a kettle on the boil, and long, meandering chats with craftspeople who can tell you exactly where the cloth was woven and why it matters.

He calls the brand’s aesthetic “organic indulgence” - clothing that is beautiful because it belongs to the environment it’s in. Think miller’s shirts, gardener’s suits, and coats that look equally at home in a hedgerow or on a city street. The silhouettes borrow from the archives of Britain’s sartorial past - roomy cuts, functional pockets, hard-wearing fabrics - while the materials are exercises in provenance and ingenuity: cotton blended with ramie - a stinging nettle fibre revered in China’s Tang dynasty - paired with trims tinted by Earl Grey tea, and buttons crafted either from casein, a cured milk byproduct, or salvaged straight from the Thames’ muddy banks.

Provenance here isn’t marketing garnish; it’s the main course. Conkers works with some of the UK’s most storied (and endangered) mills: Moygashel in Northern Ireland, weaving linen since the early 19th century; Brisbane Moss in Yorkshire, guardians of heritage corduroy; and Discovery Knitting in Leicester, one of the last jersey mills standing. Each garment is a quiet act of preservation, keeping these skills alive in a country where factory closures are an almost weekly headline.

Even their website is built for transparency, with a “public library” of images, fabrics, and research material for anyone to browse. In a fashion world fiercely guarding its so-called “trade secrets,” this open-source stance feels almost like a quiet act of rebellion. Warner wants customers to know exactly what they’re wearing, where it came from, and whose hands shaped it.

The forthcoming Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Behold Ye Ramblers, takes its cue from the early 20th-century rambling movement - when walkers staged mass trespasses to reclaim public access to the countryside. The clothes nod to that moment in history when military surplus seeped into civilian life: waxed cotton jackets worn with tweed trousers, cargo pockets creeping into weekend attire, and textiles built to withstand everything from blustery ridge lines to the slow wear of a well-worn pub bench.

And yet, for all its reverence for the past, Conkers is pointed firmly at the present. In an age when fashion seasons move faster than the weather, the brand offers a counterpoint: garments you’ll still want to wear a decade from now, designed with the kind of honesty that’s immune to trend fatigue.

Conkers isn’t chasing hype. It’s inviting you to take the long way home - preferably through a field, in shoes you don’t mind muddying, and in a jacket whose story is stitched into every seam.

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Words by AW.

Photo courtesy of Conkers.