There’s nowhere quite like the British countryside. Rolling hills. Lush streams. Unintelligible farmers. Homebrew cider that’ll turn you blind. Yep, the British countryside is a truly, truly wonderful place. A special place.
One brand that shares our profound appreciation for Britain’s beautiful backyard is Fera, a company whose tagline is ‘A Love Letter To The British Outdoors,‘ and after you take a look at the gear, you can see that the Fera aren’t just in love with Britain’s countryside, they’ve fallen head over heels for it and landed firmly in a pile of the West Country’s finest smelling cow shit.
Fera aren’t just admiring Britain’s countryside from afar, though, you can tell they live and breathe it – collared jackets, delectable shirting, heritage labels, hardwearing canvas and a very healthy helping of corduroy. It’s sort of like they’ve distilled all the best bits of Barbour, Filson & Carhartt, brewed them and created a moonshine so strong it’d make even the hardiest of yeomans wince. (In a good way)
To find out more about one of the most refreshing outdoor brands we’ve seen in a while, we caught up with founders, Sid & Dec, and chatted about everything from conker tournaments and flyfishing to poaching and Ponzi schemes…
Hi Sid & Dec, how are you? Where are you? And what exactly do you do?
We are plonked in our new studio in Bermondsey. Great for Sid, it’s a twenty-minute commute. Not so good for Declan, who lives in Wiltshire…We both run Fera, a menswear brand that is made for wading through bogs at dawn and pubs at dusk. It’s our love letter to the British outdoors.
What did you both do before what you do now?
We had another business that organised high-end outdoor adventures and events, all with a focus on food. We were terrible at making money with it, so it was great fun but short-lived. The highlight was taking people diving for scallops off the coast of Islay in Scotland before having a chef cook the catch over fire on the beach.
Sounds mega, how did you both meet?
Aged 5 at the 1998 St Francis School Unofficial Conker Tournament. From a fierce rivalry was born a great friendship.
How did Fera start? Where did the inspiration originally come from?
In 2021, Covid put a stop to our previous business, but out of its ashes rose Fera. At the beginning, it was a completely different brand. It was a deadly serious, overly reverential outdoor brand waffling about the call of the wild. But it quickly morphed into an extension of us and what we really love. It’s hard to define, but it’s a cocktail of rural culture, outdoor adventures, British heritage and all of it not taken too seriously.
Yeah, it definitely feels like a breath of fresh air amidst all the other ‘serious’ outdoor brands. Anyway, what does Fera actually mean, if anything?
Blowjob in Japanese which was a surprise to us.
That’s a surprise to me, too. What is it about the British countryside that you love so much?
The countryside is weird, wonderful, bucolic, full of hillbilly ingenuity, rich with history, eccentric, beautiful and much more. On one side of a hill, you might have an illegal rave in a cave, while on the other side, a meat raffle is going on at the Striped Lion pub. Personally, we think all this needs to be celebrated, and we are doing our bit through the conduit of clothes.
Did you both grow up in the British countryside?
We are both Moonrakers from Wiltshire.
At what point did it dawn on you that you wanted to start a brand? Was there a definitive triggering moment?
When we were 9 years old, we launched a business at school, getting our mates to invest in it with 10p Wham bars. When we had enough Wham bars tucked away, we declared bankruptcy and absconded with our sugary bounty. After that success, we went into hiding for 20 years to plan our next Ponzi scheme.
What Fera garment are you the most proud of?
The one we are both most proud of is our worst selling product. Our second most proud one is the Poacher Gilet. It was one of our earliest products and still our bestseller.
Big fan of the Poacher Gilet – what would be the dream non-clothing item for Fera to produce?
Every week, we fantasise about our spin-off fly fishing equipment brand. Doing a custom old Defender (à la ALD and their Porsches) would be fun. We want to do a custom vinyl press of birdsong recordings if anyone can hook us up. Or collabing with Honda to bring back their ATV 3-wheelers would be the dream, but probably deadly.
Solid picks. What brands do you look to for inspiration?
Dec loves Ralph Lauren because of how it has persistently maintained cultural clout with so many subcultures in so many formats. Sid loves Palace, not because he can skate or because he can pull off their great designs, but purely because of their films. They must be a lot of fun to dream up and make. If Palace is listening, we have access to an abandoned military base where they can do nollie inward heelflips till the sun goes down.
What are your favourite British countryside activities to engage in?
Fly fishing and cooking over fire, both on repeat.
What are your favourite areas of the British countryside?
That’s a tough one. We met some wonderfully eccentric folk in Fermanagh the other day, had a lot of fun with the Coastal Exploration Company on the Norfolk coast a while back now, but the current dream is to find an ancient cider orchard in the Malvern Hills.
The new fishing collection and the social content around it was great. Are either of you keen fishermen?
All types of fishing, but particularly fly fishing, are our obsession. Really Fera should be a fishing brand. All the best ideas come to us when we’re stuck in the middle of a river with no phone reception and no fish biting.
We started Fera thinking we’d be outdoors the whole time. In our first year we closed the website for two weeks to do a fishing trip to Cameroon. Now it’s grown, we spend all our time behind desks emailing each other fishing films. Buy our clothes so we can go fishing again.
What would the dream Fera activation/event be?
We’ve talked about a London pop-up a lot, bringing some of the countryside to the big city. Find a steep hill to roll a cheese down, a dark alley to bet on a ferret race, enough apples to press a Fera city cider, that kind of thing.
Have any notable figures been spotted wearing Fera?
We’ve had two A-list British actors order from us. We naturally emailed them, they naturally didn’t reply.
One of them has got to be Noddy Holder, and the other is definitely Monty Don. Is there any Dream Fera poster person? Fiction or nonfiction. Dead or alive.
Ron in Declan’s local who can recite the entire of Kaiser Chief’s Ruby with a pint of Guinness balanced on his head.
What do you guys get up to when you’re not doing work-related stuff?
We’re trying to not mention fishing again. It’s niche stuff, but we both love nature recovery. It may ruin us financially, but we’ve committed to giving 3% of every sale to conservation projects. There are people out there doing some very cool things. Stay tuned later this year for a project on wild honeybees we are helping.
Favourite films?
Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Withnail and I, Nice Guys, Italian Job (OG), Step Brothers.
Big selection. What can we expect to see from Fera in 2025 and beyond?
At the end of last year, Beni joined us as Product Director and our first employee. Having someone who actually knows how to design clothes is a bit of a game-changer. His designs start filtering in our next SS25 drop, inspired by birdwatching. Come autumn, his full designs are being unleashed in a workwear capsule and another capsule that features a woven label of a pack of foxes getting revenge…
Definitely keeping our eyes out for both of those. Cheers for chatting today, fellas.
