15 Moments For 15 Years.
With 2025 just hours away, we round up our 15th anniversary celebrations. 15 years of Peace, Love, Soul, people, places and moments that shaped who we are.
As the year comes to a close, we have all been feeling quite nostalgic—especially our Co-Founders David and Stephanie. In the spirit of looking back to look forward, they share 15 honest, real, and proudly Universal Works moments from the last decade and a half.
So cheers to the journey so far, and thank you to everyone who has been a part of it, including you. While we remember how it all started and the memories we have shared, today is a great opportunity to think about what the future might look like too. We hope you will stick with us for another 15 great years—and we hope many more.
Team UW x
Kicking things off, it only feels right to start with the clothes. In our first ever collection, our garments were all a tonal mix of Olive, Grey, Black and Brown. But always the types to do things differently, our friends at Oi Polloi saw our pieces and said, “If you make this collection in Navy, we will buy it.”
“Since that moment, Navy has been our best selling colour and we love it—but for our Spring 2014 season we decided to have some fun and make the whole collection, the hangers, the furniture—everything—in pink, but of course it was ‘also available in Navy’.”
Top image: John Jarrett. Bottom Image: Julian Ganio.
2. Three Stylists, Three Days.
We have always loved the fact that all walks of life dress in Universal Works. Dads, sons and now sometimes daughters are adding UW to their daily rotations. From the start, and through every collection since, we have loved seeing how so many different people style our clothes in so many different ways.
“We are not avant-garde, we are wearable and directional, simple, honest but contemporary. We wanted to express this by giving our Autumn Winter 2014 collection over to three different stylists at London Collections Men. They could interpret it how they liked, one each day for the three days of the show.”
3. The UW x Birkenstock Film.
It might be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when Birkenstocks were only adopted by a select few taste-makers. Our Co-Founder Stephanie was one of them—introducing David, and eventually the rest of the team, to the shoes, resulting in our 2019 collaboration with the brand. We have never looked back, with a pair of Boston Clogs appearing on the feet of at least three UW staffers at any one time.
“When I first met Stephanie I’d never heard of Birkenstock. I thought, what are these weird-but-cool hippy shoes she’s wearing?! From then on I started to love them. To combine our love of Birkenstocks with our love of dance as an art form was a dream come true. We made such a fabulous short film, and made lifelong friends in the process.”
4. Chance Encounters.
No matter the collection or the clothes, the things that stand out the most for us while we do what we do are the people we meet, the characters we add to the UW community, and the hidden gems we find when we are doing anything but looking.
“So this one is a personal favourite… but aren’t they all. Stumbling upon a local hotspot; tiny but super cool in an understated way. Nestled in Sendagaya, an area full of fashion showrooms, and where our first sales agents in Japan were based, is a circa-15-seat eatery. Run by an ex-Levi’s saleswoman for Japan, who knows the in-crowd for sure, this restaurant is totally humble, totally authentic and totally cool. I recommend it to everyone. Not just because of the food—it's her, it’s the place, it's the amazing Kintsugi gold repaired plates! It’s just the epitome of Japan for me.”
5. Hand Painting Our Logos
What happens when, as a newly-fledged, independent brand, you make the leap into having your own stores? You do it yourself, of course… David painted our anamorphic ceiling sign, and we set up the store with the help of another good friend, Richard, an architect at One Off Design.
“‘Never forget where you come from’ my dad always told me. I trained as a sign writer and painter after leaving school at 16, so I had the skills, and the need, and to be honest I loved it—flexing my paintbrush muscles again, and actually getting the stores looking original and exciting. I was totally stoked to be on the famous Berwick Street in Soho and making a big statement for Universal Works. I felt like we had arrived.”
6. Ian Wright Wears UW.
We still get a thrill from seeing our garments on real people, ordinary people on the street—buying UW, liking UW and supporting us for who we are and what we stand for. But occasionally a real hero of ours pops up in our clothes, and we have to pinch ourselves every time.
“I’m a big football fan and Stephanie (even though a Rochdale girl) was a gooner for a few years while living in London. We are both big fans of Ian Wright—we love his passion, his joy, his skill and, let’s face it, Wrighty always loved his clothes. One day not so long ago I spotted an instagram post of his, wearing Universal Works. It turns out he had bought a bunch of our garments from a west London stockist of ours—and didn’t know we had our own stores. We soon let him know and he became one of our favourite customers.”
7. Cabin in the Woods.
Every so often an opportunity comes along that feels like it ticks off your bucket list, even if you were unaware you had a bucket list in the first place. A trip to Seattle to hike a mountain, stay in a cabin and launch a collection in Glasswing? This is one of those.
“We collaborated with an LA-based recycling company who hand repaired, painted, embroidered, patched and reworked some old pieces of ours for a special event with our stockist Glasswing in Seattle. A great store with great people, doing great things. They were stocking super cool brands from the USA, Japan and well, us! We hiked a mountain, explored an incredible ice cave, stayed in an amazing modernist cabin and played card games until the early hours. We will forever be in the debt of the Glasswing crew for some of our lifetime’s best memories.”
8. Trips to Tokyo.
We could not do our 15-year roundup without shouting out our agents and stockists across the globe—as well as the trips around the world that come with visiting the UW family and showing our collections. With some of our early stockists in Tokyo still a part of the UW family now, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to spotlight some of our visits over the last 15 years, from our Japanese distributors to the hand-stamped coin purses that came alongside presenting our collection in a palace in Tokyo (a pinch-me moment for all of those involved).
9. Not Another Catwalk.
A totally-UW twist on a traditional catwalk, ‘Not Another Catwalk’ was a stop motion film we made to bring a sense of humour to proceedings—which we achieved in more ways than one. We do take what we do seriously, but we also think fashion should have an element of fun; these behind-the-scenes shots are a great example of just that.
10. Stop Motion.
To celebrate the Launch of Workshop Denim we created two short films in collaboration with the talented Allan Buxton. As a Nottingham-born brand, we love working with Nottingham-based creatives. A small team of two created such a hugely brilliant video for us, and to this day it is one of our favourite shoots.
11. Fly Posting In Paris.
Revisiting our Autumn Winter 2017 fly posting feels like a look back to a time before we were in this fully digital age. Another shoot we are so proud of, we had so much fun planning it, shooting it and running around the streets of Paris pasting our prints on the walls.
12. Always Moving Boxes.
We love a human chain here at Universal Works. Whether we are moving offices or receiving deliveries into our warehouse, it has become a bit of a tradition to all chip in to get things unpacked or up on shelves—and probably always will be.
13. Adidas x UW.
Every so often, we get a collaboration request that blends what we do with something we can learn from a team of like minded people—who do things very differently to us. More of a David meets Goliath (literally), adidas and their running team got us involved in their Run City Pack project, where they invited founders who genuinely have a love of running to collaborate on a collection of running shoes and clothes.
“I spent so much of my formative years in adidas; I was always an adidas boy, so it was a dream for me to one day work with them. What a genuine, professionally rewarding and fun time we had designing real running shoes and real running kit with the technical team, they were respectful and supportive and we made some great products—clothes and shoes that I'm still wearing today!”
14. Our New Office in Nottingham.
As we unpack the last of our pencils, mousepads and mugs into our second Nottingham office, we now work from two buildings in our hometown, with three stores in the UK, and one in Berlin. A huge leap from David and Stephanie’s kitchen table where it all started, our new HQ is home to a 25-strong team, and some of the best city views you could find.
“We started Universal Works with dreams, five grand in savings, and a kitchen table. The first two were important but the kitchen table was where the magic happened. Big enough to become my design table, to do the daily running of a small brand from, and even for company board meetings (although there were only two of us!). One of our HQ buildings we now own, which now houses 25 people in our team. A building with history and presence, it is full of character and we hope an inspiring place to work. I was not allowed to paint it black, so it's charcoal instead! It is a truly proud achievement for Stephanie and I have to say, we have come this far, but even though we are now property magnates we will stay humble… I hope!”
15. Our First Ever Pop-Up.
In our very first year, with our very first collection, we opened a small pop-up store on Lambs Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, London. We took over the front of a friend’s PR office and presented all the stock we could muster up. David manned the store daily, as UW’s only employee for the first year, with Stephanie still working full-time elsewhere in the fashion industry to pay the bills.
“We asked a local printer to make a poster of one of the first shots we had taken of our clothing, using an old friend as a model. It ended up twice the size of my request, so it was bigger than life size. Those walking by felt they could come and try the garments; that it was not just for models but real people. Stephanie asked another friend, artist Kay Van-Bellem, to decorate the store windows and she did a series of animal tailors in sticky tape. It again made the shoppers see something original and our sense of humour, and attracted a following that meant eventually we opened a permanent store on the same street a few seasons later. I think our past pop-ups show our desire to build something with limited resources, and what can be achieved with commitment and hard work.”
Acknowledgements & Thank yous:
2. John Jarrett & Julian Ganio.
3. Exposure.
6. Ian Wright.
7. Glasswing.
10. Allan Buxton.
11. Waste Studio.
13. Adidas, Being Hunted & Ian Peggs.
14. Grandpa Store.
15. Kay Van-Bellen.