Disorder Boutique, Fashion Forward Future Classic
Our own in-house menswear brand Disorder/Disorder Boutique, specialises in contemporary tailoring, it is what we call, ‘fashion forward future classic.’ We keep our prices as competitive as possible, even though Disorder is a limited edition high end fashion product, manufactured in the UK.
The brand Disorder/Disorder Boutique is totally unique, it does not pretend to be something it isn’t and its originality disarms people when they first see it. Once a person discovers the tailored fit, they get hooked on its Italian influenced designer cuts, with a British oriental twist. Our designs are influenced by a strong sense of a need to give justice to our customers with a look and feel that makes them reflect their personality. The brand does not ‘hijack’ the customer, as does so many other labels with their shouting branding, our designs instead, we like to think, become part of the character of the individual. Each design literally starts from an idea, we do not follow fashion, nor do collections as such, or seasons, we just design what we feel like and run it until it runs its own natural course. We are renown for our range of shirts and jackets, trousers and t-shirts with graphic art from co-owner Mark Howard’s own sketches and illustrative artwork.
As one Disorder customer once said, “Disorder is about art, just as much as it is about fashion…” We love to create an understated, a simply ‘good looking piece of design’ that has subtly broken every rule in the book ‘look.’ Another customer said that the only way he can describe disorder the menswear brand is that it has a ‘post-modernist,’ feel if there was such a thing… We have an underground cult following, although most of our business is through word of mouth and our customers live all over the world, once people discovers us, they prefer to keep us a secret. We hope that you find this site engaging and that to us this is more than just about clothes.
Disorder Boutique, Unique Boutique. If global blanding works on you and you have cloning tendencies, then stop now! Don’t go any further! Click off now! If however, you consider yourself to be an independent thinker and can think outside the box and care about what you wear, can see through the hype that surrounds the big global brands, and find that over distributed repetitive stock in every mall, every department store, and in every other retailer, or a brand having 3 branches in one city centre, very OTT, cannibalistic and boring, then you may have just found what you have been looking for in a long time! This is precisely how our customers feel when they first walk into our bespoke quirky store located off the beaten track. People are often relieved that a store like ours exists.
Disorder Ltd is a unisex independent fashion retailer, stocking clothing ranges and accessories produced by a variety of independent designers, made exclusively for the store on Needless Alley, just off New Street High Street in Birmingham city centre. At Disorder we break down all barriers, we are friendly and unpretentious, and attract a fantastic range of customers through the artwork, the clothes, the atmosphere and our “service is second to none,” as said by an owner of a successful supermarket.
The Disorder boutique is a beacon for those who love creatively made clothes with design integrity. Everything in Disorder is made exclusively for the shop and are often one-off, thus guaranteeing a unique experience for our customers. A very special shop even by world standards, if on your doorstep, you must pop in next time your in Birmingham, if not, this e-commerce site has been especially developed for those like minded potential customers who are looking for something special that is not going to cost an arm and a leg, and feels assured that it has come through a healthy production process.
Disorder customers are often defiant of the regular global brands and their predictable advertising campaigns, they are often people who may not shop constantly but shop for quality, a discerning crowd with an innate love for art, music, film and travel. Our customers are people in search of new fresh ideas, they are often well travelled, who know that even by world city standards our shop beats the trendy counterparts in New York, Paris, Rome and London hands down, simply because nobody is doing what we are doing; challenging people with the way they think of a shirt through design for example. We are a pioneering fashion retailer and those that can sense that, when they walk into our store and ‘get,’ what we are trying to do, support it, once they know of the concept and become bold believers of our store.
The Politics of Disorder Boutique We set Disorder up in 1998 as a vertically integrated business as an ’experiment’. An experiment to show that by combining our strong political and social beliefs with our creative ideas, it is possible to produce a brand as special as Disorder.
On an political level, we wanted to provide an alternative to the uncompromising business ways of the corporate companies. Behind the high street ethos of driving profits at all cost, there are hidden costs that are not included on companies’ balance sheets which are being subsidized by those that can least afford it. If garments appear to be too cheap to be true in top UK high street stores, guess why, and guess who is paying for it really? Furthermore unsold fast junk fashion from our retail high street stores are sadly dumped in developing countries, destabilising their indigenous textile producers and garment manufacturers, leading to unemployment in those regions.
Mass production through vast obscene amounts of credit channeled from banks or venture capitalists through to value focused fashion retailers, or global brands, not only annihilates local independent businesses on the UK high streets who struggle to compete with rising overheads as a result of corporates taking up retail space, but it also kills and stunts growth in other fragile economies in other parts of the world.
One has to question the morality behind sending funds for development on the one hand and taking away so much more on the other hand by our self centered companies and thus doing more damage than good through our own greedy consumer habits with a double edged sword.
We are however, proud to be the antithesis of the high street; we manufacture our products locally in Birmingham, we use British expertise and British fabrics 90% of the time. This is not a sales gimmick; we have been banging on about the importance of keeping manufacturing in any industry where possible in this country since we started in 1998, and the importance of resisting manufacturing abroad in countries like China.
Disorder is therefore stubbornly made in the UK with real principles, it is one of the last remaining true British labels. Not only this promotes employment locally, it also means that the air miles in our product is seriously cut to a minimum. As opposed to the high street, we do not mass produce our garments nor is it over distributed. Our garments are hand crafted and we continue to strive for quality over quantity. By having been able to build a positive sustainable business that has developed organically over the last 12 years, with a higher business consciousness to most of our neighboring stores and brands that we are surrounded by, Disorder Ltd as in the company, is testament that there is an alternative way to doing business in this capitalist global economy.