Nicholas Daley: A Rhythm Cut into Cloth

Nicholas Daley recuts tartans, develops jacquards and builds outerwear that makes textile and musical histories part of a usable wardrobe.

Nicholas Daley put old tartan into new clothes for spring 2026. The fabric had been woven in Ireland for earlier seasons of his label and remained in surplus. He cut it again as an overshirt, a bomber, a hunting vest, a wrap kilt, a short, a baker-boy hat and a sling tote. The operation was material rather than sentimental. A pattern that once identified one collection returned on different parts of a wardrobe, changing its rhythm each time it met a new cut. In Daley's work, repetition does not mean that the past has been preserved untouched. It means the past is still available to be played. [1]

The London designer has built a menswear practice around the encounter between Scottish and Jamaican family histories, textile craft and music. His parents ran a reggae club in Dundee; his Scottish grandmother knitted; his Jamaican grandfather worked as a cobbler. Daley has spoken about all three as part of the world in which making and sound were ordinary, not separate artistic disciplines. A garment can carry a beat through a jacquard, a tartan or a fastening, but it also has to survive the practical life of an overshirt, trouser or coat. The tension between reference and use is where his best work sits. [2][3]

His label began in 2015 after study at Central Saint Martins and work that included Savile Row, Paul Smith and retail experience at Dover Street Market. Those experiences do not explain the collection on their own, but they help account for its breadth. Daley knows the language of tailoring and the pressures of a shop rail as well as the communal energy of a live performance. He has kept those worlds in conversation rather than asking one to certify the other. A jacket may have a story, but it still has to persuade someone who has never heard the record behind it. [2][4]

Cloth as an archive in use

The spring 2026 collection was called Rooted Revival. Its title might suggest a retrospective, yet the brand's own release describes new forms for archived material. Registered tartans from earlier collections were cut into several familiar Nicholas Daley shapes and into the new Scouts Short. The value of the old textile is not just that it reduces unused stock. It gives a designer a set of visual relationships that can be revised through scale and placement. A tartan on an overshirt is read over the chest and arm; on a wrap kilt it moves across the hip and leg; on a hat it frames the face. The same lines acquire different functions. [1]

The release also calls patchwork a means of telling stories and cites traditions of reuse beyond the label, including Gee's Bend quilting and Japanese boro. Those histories are distinct. Daley's own work in Rooted Revival has a specific material basis: surplus cloth from his label's archive is given new positions within his garments. The release's references locate this act of reuse within a wider conversation, while the clothes show what Daley does with the material at hand. The changes of colour, scale and texture made possible by existing cloth are visible before any broader analogy is drawn. [1]

One result is that Daley can build continuity without making each season look identical. The tartan changes its neighbours: waxed cotton in one jacket, a knit in another look, denim or jersey elsewhere. A recurring motif becomes a variable rather than a logo. Daley said in a 2025 interview that he regards his collections as relatives of one another. The metaphor is useful because family resemblance allows difference. A fabric returns bearing a history but is free to form another relationship. [1][2]

His spring 2025 collection, Sacred Drums, approached rhythm more literally. Vogue reported a signature red, green and gold tartan woven in Ireland and a cotton jacquard developed with a sound-wave pattern. The tartan appeared in wide trousers and work jackets; the jacquard was cut into a shirt jacket, hoodie and casual suit. The visual motif did not replace construction. Different garments determined how the pattern moved across a body: the wave could sit in the relaxed plane of a jacket or bend around the softer folds of a hoodie. The sound reference was material, but the cut gave it pace. [5]

Daley connected that season to Nyabinghi drumming within Rastafari communities. In his account, the musical reference belongs to a relationship among musicians, listeners and histories of the African diaspora. The garment does not contain the music in any literal sense. It offers a visual response to rhythm through cloth, colour and the pacing of repeated elements. Worn by someone far from the event or community that inspired it, the piece carries a trace of Daley's listening without claiming to reproduce the tradition. Naming the source makes the distance visible as well as the connection. [5]

The weight of an outer layer

For Rooted Revival, Daley returned to Halley Stevensons of Dundee for waxed cotton. The material appeared in panels across jackets, vests, a smock, an overshirt and shorts. Waxed cotton has a practical reason to be present: it adds protection and structure to an outer layer. The placement of panels also changes how a garment looks and wears. A field of wax beside softer cloth can make the jacket's architecture visible, directing the eye to a pocket, shoulder or hem. The textile reference to Dundee is personally resonant, but it is not only symbolic. It changes what the piece can withstand. [1]

The Slygo Mac in that collection paired waxed panels with a double-faced cotton check sourced in Japan. The contrast gives two textiles different jobs within one coat. The release does not specify the performance of every panel, so it would be excessive to claim precisely where the wearer is most protected. What it does establish is Daley's refusal to separate an archive of places from an archive of techniques. A Dundee fabric and a Japanese check enter one outerwear pattern because each offers a different hand and visual weight. The coat becomes an argument made through joining. [1]

The French-made camo jacquard in the same season offers another test. The label describes it as a recycled polyester and organic cotton blend with a swirling animal-inspired pattern. Daley used it in a three-pocket overshirt, Rebel Smock, hunting vest, aloha shirt, wrap kilt, hat, tote and a casual suit of Rebel Jacket and wide pleated trouser. Camo conventionally promises concealment or military utility; here it becomes a richly patterned textile that asks to be seen. The transformation works only because the garment remains recognisable: the overshirt still has pockets, the trouser still falls from a waist, the bag still carries. The print's altered role is clearest against those ordinary functions. [1]

There is a danger in calling every material decision “sustainable.” The brand specifies recycled content and surplus tartans, but does not supply a complete lifecycle assessment for the collection. Reusing old yardage and incorporating recycled fibres are real choices with production implications. They do not prove zero waste or a universal environmental benefit. Daley's practice is more credibly described through particular suppliers, fabrics and garment uses than through an unqualified virtue. [1]

A shirt in a different key

The spring 2026 collaboration with Gitman Vintage placed Jamaican bandana tartan on an American Western shirt. Daley's release records shaped front and back yokes, mother-of-pearl snap buttons and an embroidered monogram at the cuff. The shirt did not have to stop being a Western shirt to carry a different textile history. Its familiar cut gives the tartan an unexpected frame. The result makes a simple point about cultural form: cloth and silhouette can travel on different routes, meeting in a garment that owes no single origin an exclusive claim. [1]

The Western shirt also shows how the small detail can keep a collaboration from becoming a surface exercise. A shaped yoke imposes a distinctive line across the torso; snaps affect how the shirt is opened; a cuff monogram asks to be noticed at the edge of a sleeve rather than across the chest. The partnership brought Gitman's attention to shirts into Daley's existing concern with checked textiles. A collaboration is convincing when both parties' methods can be felt in the object, not merely listed in a press announcement. [1]

Daley has worked with many larger names, including Clarks, Fred Perry, Mulberry, Adidas and Carhartt WIP. Each category imposes different constraints. A shoe holds the foot differently from a jacket; a bag needs its own balance and carrying method; a sports garment is expected to move and wash repeatedly. The challenge is to bring Daley's textile and music vocabulary into these objects without flattening the partner's function. In a 2025 interview about a Clarks project, he spoke of authenticity through the family and musical references that continue to shape his label. The test remains the product in use. [4][6]

His work for a Highsnobiety capsule made that balance particularly legible. Daley discussed a tartan scarf referring to Scotland and a hand-knitted, generously shaped crochet hat made to accommodate his dreadlocks. The three-piece project drew on Lord Kitchener's song “London Is the Place for Me” and the complex optimism and hostility around Caribbean migration to Britain. The hat's shape is not an abstract sign of heritage; it solves a fitting problem for a particular wearer. The scarf carries a family and regional textile reference. Together the accessories make a larger story from things that still have to be worn. [3]

The family business of sound

Music in Daley's collections is more than a soundtrack selected to give runway images atmosphere. His parents' Dundee reggae club supplied an example of culture being made collectively, in a room. He has continued to collaborate with musicians and to build events around their work. The British Fashion Council describes support for music initiatives, while his own site gives space to mixes alongside clothes. The brand's music practice is not proof that any one garment successfully conveys rhythm, but it establishes an ongoing conversation with people who make the sounds the clothing cites. [3][4]

The parents' club also complicates the easy description of Daley as combining “two cultures.” A Scottish city was already a place where Jamaican music and British audiences met in his family life. The club was not a bridge drawn after the fact for a fashion biography; it was a real social activity around which his parents worked. Daley can draw on tartan and reggae without treating them as symbols at opposite ends of a map. They had already shared space before he cut either into a garment. [2][3]

The Scottish knitting line is just as concrete. His grandmother taught skills that reached his mother and then him. In Rooted Revival, the hand-crocheted hooded waistcoat and oversized hand-knit sweater keep small-scale craft present within a wider seasonal wardrobe. A knit can envelope rather than sharply outline the body. The making process also leaves a different trace from industrial jersey: the rhythm of repeated loops can be felt in the surface, weight and stretch. These are material qualities, not a claim that every wearer must know Daley's family story to appreciate the garment. [1][2]

It is tempting to call the music and knitting references nostalgic. Daley has repeatedly made them do contemporary work. A hooded waistcoat can be layered over current street clothes; a tartan scarf can be tied in several ways; a cotton piqué tracksuit can be worn without any formal knowledge of the 1970s dance-floor styles that informed it. The collection release describes a two-way zip on the track top and an adjustable hem on the track pant. Those details hand some control back to the wearer, allowing volume and coverage to change. The clothes do not ask the past to stand still. [1]

Making the label last

Daley has spoken about the business work that sits behind a cultural project: suppliers, retailers, financing and the time demanded by independent production. His 2025 Fashionista interview names Tokyo, London and New York as important markets and describes the support, partnerships and retail relationships that have helped sustain the label. These are not incidental to the design. A bespoke textile requires someone willing to weave it; a small run needs a buyer; a designer who collaborates with craftspeople must create a schedule that allows their work to be done well. [2]

His collection history on the official site runs from Culture Clash in spring 2015 through Rooted Revival and beyond. The sequence shows a long investigation rather than a single breakthrough look. Titles such as Anansi Rhythm, Sacred Drums and Reggae Klub name repeated musical and diasporic interests, but the garments have changed as the workshop, suppliers and audience have grown. The archived tartan in 2026 is evidence of that duration. It exists because earlier decisions produced cloth worth bringing back. [1][7]

Recognition has followed: the British Fashion Council records prize shortlists, a fund award and later menswear nominations; Fashionista reported a 2025 Pratt Fashion Visionary Award. Those milestones place Daley within the industry's institutions. His spring 2026 coats, meanwhile, return the story to weight, surface and the way a piece meets a shoulder. An award records a judgment about the practice, while each garment has to make its own case in use. The archival textiles and reworked shapes bring his long interests into a wardrobe a person can move through. [2][4]

Daley's strongest collections refuse the neat separation between personal heritage and production method. Tartan is not only a Scottish sign when it is woven, stored, recut and placed on a kilt, jacket or tote. Reggae is not only a theme when it leads him to work with musicians and think about the social life of clothes. Wax cotton is not only an ancestral reference when it changes the weather-readiness of an outer layer. Each detail can be traced to a source and tested as part of a garment. [1][3]

Return to the surplus cloth with which Rooted Revival began. The fabric was not exhausted by its first season. Daley found new ways for its lines to cross a body, giving an old textile another tempo. That is the appeal of his practice: history is neither a museum piece nor a ready-made moral. It is material for a designer to handle, cut, join and offer to someone who will wear it into the next room.