Here at Proper, we very rarely venture much further South than Birmingham. But a handful of brands make us want to change that, and Finisterre is one of them. Whenever we find ourselves scrolling through their Instagram (which is quite often), we always leave filled with envy. Working at Finisterre just seems like it would be so much fun. You’re surrounded by surfing, knitwear, big jackets & Cornwall’s natural beauty – which to us sounds like a pretty fulfilling lifestyle.
What started as one man stitching fleeces in a flat above a surf shop has blossomed into one of the UK surf scene’s greatest exports, and Finisterre’s work now stretches far beyond Cornish coastlines. We’ve long been overdue a chat with the brand, and when the opportunity to have a gossip with Todd, Finisterre’s head of design, presented itself, we snatched at the chance.
So, if you fancy learning more about knitwear, parka jackets, and what Finisterre actually means, start scrolling.
Hi, Todd. How’s it going? Are we okay to just pick up from where we started before the interview? About how you said you were 10 metres from the beach?
Actually about a hundred meters. A hundred metres from the edge of a cliff.
Wow – how’s it working in that environment and at Finisterre generally?
It’s incredible. I’ve been in the company for 12 years now, but I fell in love with this business probably about 15 years ago. It felt like it was just completely under the radar for a lot of people. I guess it was very surf specific but it was also gaining an underground cult status, certainly in the city.
I was living in London at the time, and had friends who surfed, but most of the activity around us was cycling. I was kinda living on my bike, and there were a handful of people wearing black Finisterre jackets! I was like, what? What is this brand? What’s going on?
At the time I was mostly involved with streetwear culture and the brands within that scene.
I was working for a brand called Tonite which was founded by Fergus Purcell. He’s the guy that has been right there from the beginning with Palace Skateboards and is the co-founder of Aries.
Okay.
So yeah, I was the brand manager way back in the day for Tonite. We were obsessed with skating and bikes, and had got really into this weird little brand called Finisterre.
It was just this little, if you knew, you knew brand. We were obsessed with 90’s Patagonia, every day coming to work in Aztec fleeces, but then it felt like we’d found this cool kind of British version.
So I developed this kind of unhealthy obsession with this little brand over in Cornwall. And eventually, went on to see if they had a position available. I was also thinking, oh shit, I’m not sure if I wanna move to Cornwall, but realistically I would’ve moved anywhere to work for Finisterre.
I just loved what they were doing. But yeah, Cornwall on its day is the best, and the location means we get to live and breathe it.
Yeah, I think that’s so important. It’s what makes all good brands what they are. Practicing what you preach. Before we go any further, what does Finisterre mean? Does it actually mean anything?
It does mean something, actually, a lot of people think we’re French, because obviously it sounds French. There’s a location in France called Finistère, but with one R.
But actually the founder, Tom, when he was in Cornwall surfing he thought ‘Something’s missing here.’
There were all these surfers wearing either military surplus or old ski gear to handle the elements. There was not one brand really catering to them. Obviously surf here is so different – it’s not Hawaii or California. Yeah, so he just thought ‘I wanna create something for these people – specifically for them.’
It was so niche. So, it was a real dream of taking it further afield. But when he was young, he used to travel round in the back of his parents’ car, a family that were obsessed by the Ocean, listening to the Shipping Forecast.
The Shipping Forecast is a BBC radio program with information that tells you everything that’s going on solely around the coast of Britain.
Right, okay…
So, it’ll tell you the wind speeds, sea state… What’s going on in all the different locations, and there’s obviously different names for each location around the UK – and one of them used to be called Finisterre.
But later on, due to a sea region in Spain having the same name, the British name was changed to Fitzroy.
But yeah, the Shipping Forecast is this really romantic thing. People who’ve got no interest in the sea or shipping or fishing, they listen to it. It helps people meditate and go to sleep. It’s a really calming, beautiful thing to listen to.
But yeah, Finisterre also means the end of the earth. Like finis – terre. End of the earth.
Oh okay, yeah yeah.
And that’s definitely what it feels like over here. So yeah, that’s all part of our story. There’s so much thought and romance and poetry and meaning behind everything we do. It’s just flows naturally.
Yeah. I think there is definitely a romantic version of the British Coast and British Coastside locations. I think the more I speak to people the general consensus I get is that people think coastal towns are pretty run down. Which in certain cases, they are. But that romantic version is still there, and on their day – as you said – the British coast is amazing. And I think Finisterre does a really good job of portraying that, and making people believe it again.
Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t really matter where you’re from. I’m from Grimsby, so you can imagine my perceptions of Grimsby & Cleethorpes compared to here are a little bit different.
I come from a family of fishermen, and it was a harder graft and a different way of life, but still there’s such a romantic version of coastal life, filled with stories.
Yeah, definitely. How does geographical location affect your design process with Finisterre?
Yeah, so going back to when the brand was founded, we’re a surf brand and whilst there is actually more surf than people realise around the coast of the UK, Cornwall definitely feels like the surf parkland of the British Isles.
And whilst there has been some imitation of overseas surf brands, the British version of surfing always feels a bit more rugged somehow. I mean it’s never going to be Venice Beach, is it?
Yeah, obviously because of the weather, it’s hard – you’ve really got to want to do it. I think that goes for doing a lot of activities in Britain – whether that be skateboarding or surfing or whatever…
Yeah. Maybe the competition or the glory gets taken out of it a bit, and it goes right back to the roots, and it feels quite tough. But yeah, you’ve really got to want to do it.
The UK is just a tiny island. It has weather battering it from every single direction and quite often, you’ll get four seasons in a day. So I think for us it’s like we’ve got to cater for a group of people who are starting their days by going to check the waves, and usually when they do, it’s pissing it down and windy as hell. I mean we’ve got sideways growing trees here, because it’s so full on.
We need to cover all of these things with our gear, and it’s actually such a pleasure to design for.
Yeah. I guess it’s not just gear for surfing, it’s gear for pre-surf, surf and post-surf. And everything in between.
That’s it. It’s not just surf, it’s kind of like ‘What’s everyone doing when there’s no waves?’
There’s all this activity around the coast, whether you’re in the water or not – there’s climbing, there’s cycling, there’s trail running – there’s a whole hive of activity going on.
Then we’ve also ended up delving into work wear as well – we’re based on a tin mine site, where a mile underground, there used to be guys digging out into the ocean wearing all kinds of fantastic work wear.
And then the fishermen, the boat builders, and everything – yeah we’ve got such a lovely heritage to be inspired by.
So the location definitely influences the functional side of the garments. Before anything else, it’s got to work. It’s got to do the job.
Yeah, massively. It’s kind of become our USP as well because we’re gaining a lot of traction now overseas. I think there has been so much integrity building this company. We’re not like a Kickstarter that has had a massive influx of cash and just boomed. There are a lot of really cool brands at the minute that have come along and within three years, they’re now worth like $300 million.
We haven’t done that, though. We’ve spent the best part of 23 years slowly, building it for longevity.
Yeah, Finisterre, seems like such a nice, slow approach to fashion. It’s definitely not hype is it?
No, not really. We end up kind of playing in fun areas with little moments of hype. But it’s not really about that. And we certainly couldn’t be further from fast fashion.
And we’re not a city brand. So yeah, I suppose it has been a slow incremental rise to where we are today. It’s all been beautifully built piece by piece. But then at the same time, you don’t just come to work for Finisterre to have a sweet time in the water all the time. What we actually find quite often is that we’re too busy. We’ve got our finger on the pulse, we’re travelling, and we’re working very hard. So I guess we work hard to play hard as well.
Just quickly, when I think of Finisterre, I always think of knitwear – the knitwear is really solid. But obviously you guys do much more than that… So in design, how do you find balancing tradition with innovation, because you do both technical garments, and heritage sort of gear.
It’s really exciting, the knitwear is its own hero. It’s unbelievable. And I think when you look at it, wool’s one of the original outdoor fibres, right? It’s got all the right natural properties, and we can’t seem to create anything better than it even if we try.
Between the seventies through to the nineties, there was this big synthetic drive. It was about science and experimenting and building all these new materials. But I think we’ve always felt that wool is in our DNA and I think we just look closely at what’s going on around here, back to our territory and we see all the fishermen wearing wool, and we can’t help but be inspired by that.
Yeah, can’t beat a fisherman knit.
Exactly. And to produce the knitwear we’re also getting the wool from sheep owned by local farmers. So we work with what we’ve got, but then the interesting thing is, we are trying to provide gear from a technical standpoint also.
Yeah.
So we can actually go incredibly technical if we want to, but over the years we’ve realized that there’s a sweet spot for our brand which we like to call understated tech. Where the tech’s built in, but it doesn’t look like it’s there.
The product might look like it’s just made of canvas, and it might look like a heritage parka, but actually when you grab hold of it, it might have an incredible blend to it. It might have taped seams. It might have highly insulating qualities inside. And it can actually live up to some of the harshest weather in the world.
But then it just looks like an old school mountain parka.
Yeah, no, I think that’s what’s really cool about the brand. Do you have a favourite Finisterre product that you’ve worked on? Could you say?
It’s so tough because my job fluctuates across all products. Yeah I love it all. The knitwear is stunning. And I think a lot of brands in recent years haven’t really associated knitwear with outdoor wear, but now some are beginning to get really interested.
We’ve actually been talking to REI, the humongous US retailer, recently about stocking some of our knitwear and they’re really excited about it.
Oh yeah? That’s super cool to see things beginning to shift. As you said, the synthetic materials had such a boom in the ’90s and early 2000s, but now it’s becoming more and more evident that washing something like micro fleece is not great for the environment. All the plastic particles seem to come off. So it’s a bit weird, making product for people to enjoy the outdoors, and then by nature that product is also destroying the outdoors. So yeah, it’s nice to see that may be changing.
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. Because while that is true, it’s not quite as simple as that.
First of all it’s looking at what a fibre can do in terms of its final function. For example we can say down is the most incredible lightweight fill, but there’s a whole element of animal welfare that goes with that. And actually when it gets wet, it becomes useless. So to counter that you have to spray chemicals on it, and then in most cases those chemicals won’t degrade.
Yeah, yeah.
Then you’re actually turning something natural into something synthetic. And so we use synthetic fill because if it gets wet, it can still keep going, without being sprayed with chemicals.
So yeah, it’s how we combine the best of each. We’re also involved quite deeply in all the impact areas of product and sustainability.
We’re even looking at how dyes affect cotton, for example. Cotton’s the most used fibre in the world and there’s more cotton fibres in the ocean than any other fibre, and some people think that that’s alright – because traditionally cotton is biodegradable. But actually, quite often it has been treated with chemicals or dyes that make that not the case. That’s another big, big subject.
It sounds like you guys are putting in the right work to make sure what you’re doing is sustainable, but obviously making clothes is inherently not ideal for the environment. It’s tough, isn’t it? But you guys seem like you’ve taken a lot of the right steps. You mentioned early about working with local farmers for knitwear, do you work with any other local businesses?
Yeah, so we’ve had a program running for years called The Bowmont Project, and it involves working with a farmer in Devon. And we’re working on plenty of other projects at the moment where we’ve got Cornish wool coming into the mix. As in wool that is grown & spun here. But then there’s not really any knitters locally that can do the knitting we require, so then we send the wool up to Scotland for them to knit for us.
But yeah there’s so many great stories that come from working with local businesses.
Sorry, I’ve just realised that we didn’t get to the bottom of your favourite product. Have you got one off the top of your head quickly?
Yeah, to be honest, I think it’s probably the parka we mentioned earlier. It’s just bulletproof, when you put it on, you feel like it has really got your back.
Nice. Were you involved with the design of that or not?
Yeah, it has gone through several iterations of design. But way, way back in 2014, we decided to make a collection called CWS, which stood for Cold Water Surf.
And that collection was amazing. We purposely chose to do things differently to how everybody else was doing them. We made brushed back merino wool blend jeans – we wouldn’t even be able to afford them today, and they were just insane.
Anyway, this CWS collection was when that parka first came along. It originally started as a three layer technical waterproof rain jacket, and the third layer on it was actually merino wool, so it really was blending the heritage and technical properties that we’re known for.
Even if we remade that exact parka today, it would still blow people’s minds.
Sounds mega, before we wrap up, we should probably talk about the recent Snow Peak collaboration, which was not on my bingo card for 2025, I’ll be honest. But the more I think about it, Snow Peak is maybe not as dissimilar to Finisterre as I first thought – but how was that, how did that collab come about and how did it go?
Yeah, it was awesome. It’s definitely been a real highlight for me personally, because I’ve been a massive fan of Snow Peak for ages. I love their apparel, I’ve always loved their titanium stuff, and also, because they’re Japanese, they just seem to do things really, really well.
We were just having some semi-regular chats with them and I was geeking out a bit because I’m such a big fan, but also trying my hardest not to push a hype element to doing a collab. It was like we’ve got to find a real reason to do this.
So yeah, then we invited them over, and did this ‘brands meet-up’ camp event with them in Cornwall and it was super, super fun. They brought all their camp barbecues and showed us their tents and everything. We got them all in wetsuits and they were probably crapping themselves because we made them jump off the edge of the cliff.
Haha, okay.
It was such a great experience, and then we started chatting with them further. They spoke about how they wanted Snow Peak to just be within nature, and just enjoy being a part of it, not being on top of it. And we all agreed that we’re basically the same version of that, but with an Ocean stance.
We’re not a competitive surf brand, we don’t sponsor riders to win big surf awards and surf the biggest wave.
So yeah, it all just resonated really nicely, and we all knew we could definitely do some really good stuff together.
We then worked with the Japanese team which was great. Obviously it was challenging because of the language barrier, but yeah it was super fun. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up launching the collection in Japan because that required Finisterre to have an additional license for selling product out there which we didn’t have at the time.
Oh really?
Yeah, that was a bit gutting, so in the end we kept it pretty streamlined to the UK. But then just recently we spoke to the US Snow Peak team, and they were asking us ‘why don’t we have this?’ So now we’re doing something with Snow Peak USA
Okay, well at least there’s some form of a silver lining. I personally thought the collab was great. Also, I’ve been meaning to ask, do you have a team that tests Finisterre products? For surf use or whatever?
Yeah absolutely, we have a tester program which we all put our names into, and we also use all of our surfers and our brand ambassadors.
We send plenty of gear on big trips too, so there might be an expedition, it could be an around the world thing…there could be someone going to Australia on a big surf mission or whatever. So all of our product really gets put through its paces before it ever goes on sale. But the person who probably puts the gear under the most stress is our founder, Tom.
Everything he takes, comes back with holes in it. He mistreats everything. So if we can make something strong enough to handle Tom, then it’s bulletproof.
Hahaha, okay. Finally, we were speaking with Fjallraven the other day about Swedish design language – you know like Saab, Volvo, IKEA, – and I was wondering if there is such a thing as a Cornish design language?
Haha, yeah. I’m not sure if I can speak on behalf of the whole of Cornwall, but yeah Cornwall likes to do things its own way. There’s a word that people use in Cornwall – ‘Dreckly’
It means I might do it soon or I might do in the future. I might turn up, maybe not for a while if at all? Okay. But yeah at Finisterre we will always turn up. So perhaps we don’t really abide by Cornish eccentricity in that respect.
The Scandinavians have incredibly design principles, though, don’t they? We’ve actually been working for the last five months or so on our own design principles, and they follow a similar school of thought to the typical Scandinavian approach to design.
It’s definitely not a bad place to draw inspiration from. Anyway Todd, I’m pretty sure that’s all my questions and I’m pretty sure we’re also basically out of time. I’ll try not to put this interview together Dreckly, hopefully you’ll have a draft from me soon.
Okay, yeah, that’d be amazing.
Alright. Nice one. Nice chatting Todd, see you soon.
Cheers, Henry.
To see what Finisterre are up to currently, see here.
