Wordplay Meets - Rich Sutcliffe, founder of Passenger
Passenger founder Rich Sutcliffe opens up about the roots of the brand, its deep connection to escapism, and the role music plays in shaping its identity. From designing out of a van to building a community rooted in creativity and the outdoors, Rich shares the passion driving Passenger forward.
What inspired you to start Passenger Clothing, and what does the name represent to you?
When we started Passenger 13 years ago, it was more about wanting to create a brand that had purpose and meaning, that would help facilitate our need for escapism and just something that would drive our passion. In reality we wanted something to get up and give a shit about in the morning.
We wanted to feel inspired. So then we decided that a clothing brand would be the way to do that. It wasn't that we saw gaps in the market or anything like that. We just wanted to create a brand that resonated with us. We launched with beanies and t-shirts and it all grew from there.
Early on in looking for a name, ‘Passenger’ came up, and that really resonated. We kind of went around the houses looking at other names. We couldn't find anything that really added that value. So we came back to Passenger and it just worked on so many levels - we were always inspired around the journey, our initial strap line was “inspired by travel music and salt water”. We spent a lot of time in our van. We were designing products out of the van, the website, the creativity all came from being on the road. But the name Passenger also has a bit of a deeper meaning, because we're all passengers in life's journey.
How would you describe the brand’s style and ethos to someone who’s never heard of it before?
We’re a responsible brand, we’re authentic and accessible. We balance function, style and versatility, creating products that look good, have an artistic style, and a noticeable DNA. So many of the clothes you see out on the trails are black, khaki, and grey. We offer those muted colours too but we also have brighter and more fun designs for those who are looking for that.
Most of all, we aim to inspire meaningful escapism, whatever that may be. So that can be around the journey or the destination, escapism is many different things to many different people.
We're not trying to get people to break records and climb the highest mountains. We're trying to get people outside to explore and feel connected with nature, connect with whatever is their element of escapism. If you want to get lost in a book, brilliant. Do it. We want to facilitate that. If you want to get lost in some music on a road trip or go for a surf and find your happy space, we want to facilitate that. We want to encourage that. We want to inspire people to do that more and more.
Passenger Clothing has a strong identity, what makes it stand out in today’s crowded fashion landscape?
I don't tend to use the word fashion too much actually, because I suppose that there's a sliding scale of fashion and obviously yes, we're on there, but I would say we're on the lower end of that scale. For us it's about being timeless and also borderless, whether that's in our brand tone of voice, our visual identity, or our product DNA. So we try to take inspiration for styles, fabrics and colours from a wide range of sources, but always with the outdoors and adventure at the root of it all. All of these sorts of elements allow us to bring our DNA and our style into our product, but be true to who we are. And sit in that space between function and fashion.
I hear you have a connection to music personally, music has deep roots in style and expression. Tell me more about your background in music and how has this influenced Passenger Clothing?
Music was instrumental to the original tone of voice, the visual identity and unlocking the kind of depth that really connected with our community. In the early days, artists like Mike McCarthy, Bon Iver, too many to name - but these kinds of deep, powerful pieces of music that really helped shape Passenger and where it is today. And music's just such a key part of it.
So I came from an electronic music background, I've always loved electronic music - anything from ambient to jazz through techno through deep house, and everything in between. So keeping that musical element is hugely important for me, it’s a big part of our soul and our DNA and that's what I think kind of separates us from lots of other brands out there that may be too outdoor focused or too technical focused - we have this depth, this playfulness.
Music allows you to escape, it’s the facilitator of escapism. So now I’ve managed to find my way back to music, because for many years Passenger was my creative outlet. The brand gets to a point, you bring in brilliant people who are able to take that from you and build, allowing you your creative freedom back. I would class myself as a creative founder first rather than a commercial founder, and if you don't find other ways to put that back in, you could find yourself lost quite quickly. So, I use music to get back into a creative flow, to help guide me again. I have a studio here at home and I'm getting back to releasing music on various labels. It's been brilliant.
My artist name is The Escapologist, so again, I'm trying to help facilitate escapism in others. My strapline has always been “allow the body to move and the mind to wander.”
Do you see Passenger as part of a bigger cultural movement that ties together fashion, music, and lifestyle?
I have never considered that, but I would say yes. There's a link between them - probably the link of escapism! I would say it's not the what, it's the why - people buy why you do it, not what you do. It's why you want to go out for this road trip? Why do you want to read that book? Why do you want to get lost in that piece of music? It all comes back down to a need for escapism. And that's not a negative, that's a positive. And I think if you connect all of those three (fashion, music, lifestyle), it creates that brand, creates that culture, that mentality. And I think that's why we're resonating with that movement.
We’re big on community. We work with some incredible community groups in the UK and Europe, supporting them and collaborating on meaningful content, trips and events and platforming them as much as we can. Especially the more niche and underrepresented groups. We’re a part of OUTO (opening up the outdoors) who are doing incredible things to improve access to the outdoors for everyone.
Are there particular artists, albums, or eras that shaped your creative direction?
Absolutely, probably too many to mention, to be honest. I'm still listening back to the old stuff that I would have been listening to 20-odd years ago, which goes back to that timeless element we’ve always tried to bring into Passenger that people long for.
It's really hard, but I think as long as you have the passion and vision, it will keep you as inspired as you once were as the years pass by.
You’ve previously worked with Mahogany. How was this and how do you see partnerships bridging fashion and music communities?
It was fantastic, and it was good for us to be able to show more than just the ‘what’ (our products), we connected our ‘why’ and getting outside through music. Soundtracks to escapism.
I believe our job is to create a community that’s built around an emotional connection, it's not to sell products. So that comes in many shapes and forms and music is the perfect medium that allows us to build an emotional connection that then can build a community for everyone to share and get behind. So I think that's the bridge between music and fashion or lifestyle or product, however you want to call it, because in essence, they're all somewhere on that scale.
How involved are you personally in the design process and creative direction of the brand?
I would say I'm no longer the shot caller. We’ve got a brilliant team at Passenger, our womenswear designer Katie has been with us since the beginning, she’s been just as intrinsic as I have, if not more important to the DNA and the design DNA of Passenger on the product side. We also have Sam, our brand director, who again has been with us from the early days. Those two have both taken everything from those initial early days conversations and shaped it into what we have today. I’m still involved, but I would never like to say I'm the shot caller, a founder has to have a vision. It's a team that can execute it. And without them, it wouldn't exist and be nowhere what it is today. And without me, it might not exist where it is today. I think we’ve got a really great harmony going.
Do you collaborate directly with musicians or other creatives when developing collections?
Yes, we do. And that is something that we are going to start doing more and more of as well because it's just brilliant. From a brand perspective, it's brilliant but also from a DNA perspective, our visual identity.
We love out-of-category and not obvious collaborations. A lot of outdoor brands work with athletes and if I look back to when we first started, coming out of the surf, travel, adventure, road trip mentality, that just didn’t feel like the right route for us. I wanted the creatives, the unsung heroes, the people who make it happen. So we’ve worked a lot over the years and hope to do more of it, with photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, music artists.
A good example is Aron Leah, or Fried Cactus is his artist name. He’s a local guy (Bournemouth based), and we chatted for years before the right opportunity came up to collaborate. He’s an illustrator whose work has been used by some big brands all over the world, and we’ve worked with him for a number of years now on a range of projects. Mainly illustrations for tees and hoodies, but also bags and caps. He has a strong sense of purpose and is inspired a lot by nature and the outdoors, does a lot of road tripping with his family.
We're just working with like-minded cool people; it doesn't really feel like work, it just feels like an extension of cool people doing cool things.
Where do you see Passenger Clothing heading in the next 5 years?
I would like to think that we can continue on our trajectory. It's really important as you're scaling and growing that you stay humble, and you keep trying to push the boundaries. For me personally, I don't want us to just settle for mediocracy and follow the same pathways that everyone else has taken. I want us to fuck shit up, but do it responsibly. I want us to have some fun with it. I want us to do some more artistic collabs, push the boundaries, inspire people, focus on the why, not the what. And I think we'll have fun doing it. And I can't tell you where it's going to end up, but I believe as long as we're having fun doing it, we're challenging the status quo, we can do it our way.
Do you want to expand collaborations with musicians, perhaps through tour merch or performance driven projects?
We've always talked about that. So Sam, my brand director and myself have always talked about how we could collaborate on, say, a video with a musician. We actually did do this in the early days. I wrote the words to a film called Adrift, and we worked with Colin Macleod, who did the music and voiceover. It was brilliant, and they're the sort of things that would be great to do again, something that’s a bit beyond the obvious and more meaningful.
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