There is a version of this announcement that tiptoes. This isn't it.
Last month we built the website for the Yorkshire Regional Defence & Security Cluster - an MoD-supported initiative connecting the businesses, universities, and institutions that underpin the region's contribution to the UK's security. For a studio whose name sits next to fragrance houses, watchmakers, and heritage knitwear, that may read as a departure. We'd argue it's the opposite.
Security is the quiet precondition of everything we make. The luxury economy, craft, heritage, the long view - only exists where there is stability to sustain it. Supply chains that cross continents, ateliers that plan in decades, brands built over generations: all of it rests on an assumption so foundational we rarely name it. Instability anywhere sends ripples through everything; the past few years have made that impossible to ignore. Collective security isn't adjacent to a society that values craft. It's the pillar that craft stands on.
And British luxury has never pretended otherwise. The field watch, the trench coat, the Land Rover - half the canon we work within began as defence equipment and earned its romance through service. Our own work for AERA tells the story of a dial colour borrowed from SAS desert vehicles. The aesthetic world we operate in has always been honest about where resilience comes from. We see no reason to be less honest about supporting it.
What drew us to the YRDSC specifically is what it actually does. This is not a weapons programme; it's regional infrastructure, a cluster that helps Yorkshire businesses commercialise research, connects universities to industry, strengthens supply chains, and creates high-value jobs in a part of the country that deserves more of them. We're a Yorkshire-adjacent business ourselves. The chance to apply our craft to something that strengthens the place we work from, and the country we work in, was not a difficult decision. It was a privilege.
So: a luxury studio built a defence website. We'd do it again. The things worth making are downstream of the things worth protecting, and we're glad to have done our small bit for the latter.
View the site
