Grey, cold, and drizzling, it couldn’t have been a better day to meet the minds behind Cozy Blokes – the self-professed “fleecewear fundamentalists” who have successfully built a business of fleeces that are not only made in Dublin, but made from high quality sustainable material.
The two Cozy Blokes themselves, Paul Corcoran and Matthew Strong walk into the coffee shop both living up to the name. Corcoran wears a Cozy Blokes branded blue fleece, while Strong is in a vintage looking purple knitted sweater. Friends for only around two years, the pair began talking, or as they put it “joking”, about creating their own line of fleeces in February 2018. Less than a year later, their first batch of fleeces have been selling well online and the brand was featured in the Irish Times before Christmas.
What makes this brand so interesting is that their fleeces are produced in Dublin in small-batches, using offcuts of a mainly recycled polartec material. With no background in fashion design themselves, the two “fashion entrepreneurs” reached out to family members to see if their idea could really come to fruition. The process kicked off in June of last year, when they began searching for the perfect fleece material. “It’s really hard to get good materials in Dublin that are reasonably priced,” Corcoran explains, so they had to look further afield.
Eventually they found a website that specialises in offcuts of the polartec material. Offcuts are substantial rolls of excess material that come from other manufacturers who wish to dispose of them ethically, so it can be “very random” in that the website can’t predict what style of polartec is coming in, Corcoran explains, “but it’s amazing quality and it’s exactly what, say, Patagonia uses”. While it costs a considerable amount, financially and environmentally, to ship the material over to Ireland, this was still the best option for high quality, sustainable material. Sustainability was “always something that we wanted, but it’s very hard to find that. When we did find it we had to do it”, Strong says. “It was like the perfect storm”, chimes in Corcoran, “good quality and sustainable. I think those two go hand in hand”.
The tweed cuffs of the fleeces are not only an interesting design feature, but a conscious choice to support the dwindling traditional Irish art form. They use tweed from Studio Donegal, who represent everything they want their company to be. The Cozy Blokes tell me that along with Studio Donegal, Viviana of The Complete Design Studio, who makes the fleeces, and Brickbear, another Dublin clothing company specialising in embroidery, have provided great mentorship too.
One of the hardest things was to reconcile the target buyers with the price, Strong explains. They originally were aiming for students and young professionals, “and then all of a sudden the price had to go where it did”. Corcoran agrees that “it was a challenge to get the price and the people at the same level”. They’re well aware that the €109.99 price tag makes their fleeces a “premium product”, but they are confident that they are worth the investment. Corcoran jokes that the fleece he is wearing will last so long that he’ll be “handing it down to my son”.
While the two of them are able to joke about the whole thing, they also give the impression that they are really invested in this “cozy lifestyle”. The both want to emphasise the fact that the brand is unisex, and that the name refers to the two of them who are “spreading the coziness”. That is why they came up with the “cozy clan”, which encapsulates perfectly the sense of community they hope to create between fellow fleecewear fundamentalists.
With their first batch going so well, talk turns to their plans for the future. They tell me that there is no end to the possibilities as coziness is a way of life – perhaps even a cozy mug is next on the list. Strong turns to Corcoran to tell him of recently being served tea in a bowl rather than a mug, fascinated by the design. They turn back to me after a brief discussion of mug design, and say “no comment” on their future plans, with a characteristic laugh.
