What is "Cool"?

Recently we’ve been contemplating the state of men’s fashion.

A trip to Regent Street – okay, hardly the cutting-edge of contemporary fashion but a retail landmark nevertheless – threw us into deep gloom.

Apart from the scintillating colours in Desigual, we found men’s clothing shops awash with blacks and greys. As if this country has elected to swathe itself in mourning for the remaining winter months.

What is it with the fashion industry? Do they really think that men are so terminally depressed as to want to wear black 24/7?

Brilliant then to find a pair of independent fashion blogs busting the myth of dull fashion. Welcome to the wonderful world of Steve Salter and Susanna Lau, real-life partners, and each with their very different but equally quirky sites at Style Salvage and Style Bubble .

Scrolling down through these blogs, one’s treated to a gallery of stylish, exotic and idiosyncratic designs. What’s more the ravishing images are matched by equally stylish and intelligent prose. And how about British designer Sarah Williams' fantastic luggage, posted on Style Salvage only yesterday.

Photo courtesy of Williams British Handmade

Contemplating some of the cool designs online, we’ve been reminded of an illuminating essay Cool Hunting With Aristotle by Nick Southgate, a trained philosopher. Southgate mounts a hilarious attack on companies’ desperate attempts to hire cool people to find out what cool people are doing.

As a philosopher, Southgate refuses to base his observations on fashion on anything as reductive as market research or commercial popularity. Instead, he enlists help from ancient philosopher, Aristotle, as his touchstone.

It was Aristotle who first outlined a series of principles concerning the virtues of life, many of which have direct application to an understanding of ‘cool’.

In recent years, fashion companies have tried to master the art of ‘cool hunting’, predicting coming styles through a mixture of market research and commercial trend analysis. Southgate contents that this way lies death. What are needed are designers and companies brave enough to follow their own instincts and to develop brands that play to their personal passions.

He argues that fashion design should constantly seek to push at the margins, linked to whatever its designer’s deepest values might be:
“If one thinks that sport should be democratic, then develop a sports brand that is about justice (arguably where Nike started, but not where they have ended up). If you think fashion is too magnificent, re-discover its generosity. If fashion is too witty, use it to tug at justice. If fashion dealing with justice is too rich for you, reassert its friendliness or truthfulness. Each will create new ways of being cool and maybe find an audience”.

They’re words close to our heart. At Millican, we believe in vintage, classic design wedded to strong ethical and eco standards.

One of our templates for design has been an old Victorian Dunhill bag that we own. Susanna Lau celebrates a similar bag in one of her January blogs. When we’re able to draw on such vintage design, combine it with contemporary functionality, and meet the highest sustainable standards, that’s given us the biggest kick of all.


Classic design combined with contemporary craftsmanship and ethically sourced materials and working practices. We’ve no idea whether that ticks any market research boxes, but it’s our idea of ‘cool’.

So rather than just wandering the shops of Regent Street lamenting clothes in the new grey or black, we’re taking inspiration from these fashion blogs and will do more of our shopping online with, for example estore Oki Ni and independents like Oi Polloi. We all need chain stores at times but for wit, originality and true style, it’s the independent mavericks that have it.

Winning The Work/Life Battle

Guest Blog by Matthew Entwistle

Achieving the right balance between work and leisure can sometimes be a real challenge. It's all too easy to neglect your passions after a hard day in the office, and the little free time we struggle to create for ourselves is so easily lost.

It was with this in mind that my partner and I decided to escape the everyday and claw back some "me" time by heading to New South Wales in Australia for five months of bushwalking, camping and fishing on the nations south east coast.

After arranging time off work and leaving everything behind we soon found ourselves with all the time in the world - but still with no time to waste, so we entered the bush at the historic National Trust village of Central Tilba at the earliest opportunity with just our faithful rucksacks (and the odd luxury of course!)

Whilst slowly trekking through the easy going rainforest gullies and the vast State Forests around Gulaga (Mount Dromedary) and Wallaga Lake it soon became apparent that there is nothing quite like taking life at your own pace.

Photo courtesy of TravellingTamas

I guess it is the element of freedom that is most apparent as every decision made is our own and any deadlines to work to are as flexible as we wish.

Imaginations and senses work in overdrive when travelling through the bush and are not stifled by traffic noise or TV and the like and it's easy to picture yourself as a gold mining pioneer or bushranger. Rediscovering good old fashioned enjoyment with only the basic things in life is wonderful - priceless in fact. Materialism is highlighted as unimportant and we find that our most treasured possessions are our lifestyles and sense of humour.

I love my creature comforts, but after living without them for a while soon remembered a thing or two about making our own entertainment. I mean, what could be better than cooking our own damper bread or flatbreads on the campfire washed down with billycan tea and reigniting our enjoyment of deep (and shallow) conversation interrupted only by the odd visiting possum or tawny frogmouth owl; or listening to Kerrie sing a few Neil Young songs? What could be more relaxing than reading great literature such as Marcus Clarke's 'For the Term of His Natural Life', or eating freshly made popcorn whilst in our sleeping bags mesmerised by the amazingly clear Milky Way? Is there anything more rewarding than a few hours fishing for flathead or bream early in the morning before breakfast?

Possum, courtesy of Jess, Beemouse Labs

It was whilst enjoying these simple things in life that I started thinking how such activities had originally introduced me to the story of Millican Dalton and his spirit of adventure.

Having been inspired by him for years because of his affinity with nature, his focus on living his own life, his dislike of modern living, and his uncompromising lifelong search for thrills and adventure, I had now found myself enjoying the same sort of things and living a similar active lifestyle (although, sorry to say, only on a temporary basis).


This led me to ponder "Can we all live like Millican?" The answer was - yes, well almost.

Although it would be practically impossible to live the life of a modern day caveman in the 21st Century (and who would want to anyway?), we can, most definitely, have our own bite of the cherry and make more time to search out our own thrills and adventure. It's all about focusing on what’s important and developing our own philosophy of life. We can all set free our spirit of adventure and follow it wherever it goes.

So, when my Australian escapade is over and I'm back at work, I'll keep the spirit alive by planning my next well deserved holiday and claiming another little victory in the work/life battle.

Matthew Entwistle

Visit www.mountainmere.co.uk for more information on Matthew and Millican Dalton.

The Lakes unzipped

Anyone caught Rory McGrath’s new TV series giving the inside story on the Lakes? Too often, the Lake District is presented in picture postcard terms. That’s okay for tourism but it’s not great for the people who live here. We know there’s more to this place than another romantic vista snapped from a car window. What about its inhabitants? The farmers? The people who live here 24/7 365 days per year?

Keswick town centre
Photo courtesy of magnusfranklin

So it’s good to see TV tackling a more fly-on-the-wall look at the Lakes. Following in the footsteps of Millican Dalton, the series also looks set to introduce some great local, eccentric characters.

Of course, it’s not a new idea, unzipping the Lake District and freeing it from the mothballs of Romantic poetry. Ten years ago, crack Liverpudlian TV writer, Jimmy McGovern, penned a drama series called The Lakes. Fans of John Simm, Dr Who’s recent nemesis as The Master, may remember that this was the series which first catapulted Simm to fame. Okay, with its lurid melodramatic plot lines and steamy sex scenes, it may have been a somewhat in-yer-face way of de-romanticising the Lakes. But at least it showed that the inhabitants are a many and varied breed! Not simply living their lives on hold until another tourist summer comes round.

When we started Millican, we chose to name our different bags after our friends in this area. This came from a similar desire – to use their true life stories to show another side of life in the Lakes. We wanted to celebrate our motley bunch of local friends, all of whom are busily getting on with their lives but who are also an essential part of the life we’ve made since moving from the city to Keswick.

Dave on his land by the Tewit Tarn, Burns Farm

So in our own homage to both these documentary and drama TV series, about the Lakes, we’re going to be trailing some of these friends in the coming months on this blog. As we move into Spring and the start of the new farming calendar, we’ll be following our mate, Dave, as he tends to his cattle and sheep farm, attends auctions, and deals with the lambing season, all the time running a busy camping and caravanning site with his wife and family.

And to break the myth that the Lakes are about sleepy rural life, we’ll be dropping in on Mark, urban man par excellence in Keswick. Mark owns Keswick Collectables, a shop with an eclectic collection of antiques, books and vinyls. Mark is the joker in our pack of friends, always guaranteed to attract the “nutter on the bus” as he goes on his travels. Mark will be regaling with some of his stories about these meetings, besides offering his wise advice on the vinyl of the week. Roll over, William Wordsworth.

Mark with Mark outside his shop, Keswick Collectables

As we’re also in the process of developing new products, hopefully for release late Spring, we’ll be introducing further new namesake friends and adding to our gallery of rogues on the Millican website. Heck, maybe Jimmy McGovern will even pen a new drama about the couple running a local company and their steamy love affair with vintage bags.

Lust For Life

There’s no better month than January for contemplating future travels.

As Arctic conditions seem set to continue, it might be tempting to swap that trip to the ski slopes for a toboggan ride down our local slopes.

But as well as holidays, of course, there’s also the idea of adventuring and mounting an expedition. It was great to hear recently from Steve Bull who wrote to us from Bull Expeditions, a business creating bespoke expeditions for would-be adventurers. Steve e-mailed to say “Just got some of your gear. Reckon it’s great”. Following up his website, it put us in mind of our own fascination with expeditions, one nurtured in childhood, reading accounts of historic explorers and their extreme.


Drift at Camp, Greenland courtesy of Bull Expeditions

If truth be told, we’re more armchair explorers ourselves nowadays. Millican isn’t a hard-pumping, adrenalin-fuelled business – we’re too soft (or too lazy) for that. But we love to cheer on others who are pushing themselves to the limit and breaking new ground. The great thing about an expedition is that it can be as gentle or extreme as you like. We’re each unique in how we perceive our limits, based on our outlook and life experience to date.


Northern lights, Greenland
Photo courtesy of nick_russill

Steve and one of his colleagues are Winston Churchill Fellows, beneficiaries of a Trust that offers grants to people who want to travel for a purpose that will benefit their careers and, subsequently, the lives of others. Churchill, of course, was another great traveller and adventurer. Just as we’ve been influenced by the pioneering spirit and values of local Lakes legend, Millican Dalton (from whom we take our name), many travellers have been inspired by the character and spirit of Winston Churchill.

Whatever we think of his politics (and the British people certainly gave one reaction at the General Election immediately after the Second World War), Churchill is an iconic figure. Known, of course, for his bulldog spirit, love of cigars, and eccentric dress sense, Churchill was also a man with an incredible zest and curiosity for life. A suitably inspiring figure as we contemplate fresh adventures and expeditions in this New Year.

Consider – he played polo in India at the highest level, learned to fly, painted, wrote, designed the ground and gardens of his family home, and in later life bred racehorses. When he was kicking his heels as a would-be politician in waiting, he learned how to lay brick walls on his estate. And he overcame a childhood stammer to master the gifts of oratory. He gave his shortest and most memorable address at his alma mater during World War Two: “Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up”. Something we like to remember as entrepreneurs on our bad days.

Another welcome communication over the New Year break came from another adventurer, Helen Spencer. She wrote:
“Hi there,

I bought one of your bags at Burghley Horse Trials in September and have travelled all over the world with it since. I absolutely love it and am pleased to say it’s now part of my travelling essentials. It fits in a huge amount of things: SLR camera, lenses, books, water, etc – much more than you’d ever think to look at it – bit like a Tardis! I’m a vet surgeon and it doubles up as a kit bag for when I am out in the field treating donkeys in developing countries.

Many thanks for making such great bags, with such care and attention to detail, and it was great to meet you back in September. Your business is really inspiring”.

Helen in Esfahan, Iran

As Helen says, we met her at Burghley but it turns out that she’s a vet, working abroad in countries like Iran for the charity,SPANA. SPANA runs projects treating working horses, donkeys and mules all over the developing world. Many New Year’s revellers are only just starting to plan their next adventure but Helen’s living it already. As we wrote recently in an article posted at the great website, From Briefcase to Backpack , our own travels and expeditions in the past have hugely impacted us, leading directly to the adventure of setting up and running Millican.

So why not get planning your next expedition or adventure? At Millican, one of our aims is to help people “to get out there”, whether that’s the British wide blue yonder or further beyond. For us, being out in nature has impacted us far more than just on a recreational basis. With nature a firm fixture in our lives, we’ve found that we reflect more on the connections between things and make better, more conscious decisions about our daily lives. If we can continue to help others discover that in 2010, we’ll be well pleased with the continuing Millican adventure.

The Year Of Peak Waste

“The year of peak waste” - that’s what inventor and entrepreneur Saul Griffiths called 2009.

Reading about the presentations on sustainability that Griffiths makes worldwide to commercial designers has set me reflecting on the new Millican products that we’re developing for 2010, the start of a new brand-new decade.

At the heart of Griffith’s presentations lies a single, emotional statement. He states that as a recent father, he wants to give his young son a Rolex watch and a Mont Blanc pen with the intention that they may be his only timepiece and writing implement for the next 100 years.

Griffith is big on what he calls “heirloom design” - that is, products which last so long that they will be handed down from grand-father to son to grand-son.


Photo courtesy of Pingu1963

Our culture has prided itself on creating the disposable and the ephemeral, blitzing us with generation after generation of new consumer products.

Enough of that. Let’s get back to vintage design with a focus on elegance, utilitarianism, and long-lasting quality.

Heirloom design has been a watchword for us here at Millican as we continue working with fellow Cumbrian, Adam Atkinson on sustainable designs for our 2010 range of products. Our bags and other products need to function extremely well, but they also need to be second to none in their quality, thus ensuring that they can guarantee a lifetime of adventure.

In recent years, it seems that our culture and ever-accelerating rate of technological progress mean that we are only be satisfied if we have the newest, brightest and the latest of everything. But is that really what we value in life? I know that Nicky and I love the vintage bags that we have stowed in our loft and around the house. Timeless artefacts that have been passed down from generation to generation and many of which are still usable.

Moreover, while much heirloom design began as a counter-cultural movement to get back to qualities of classic design and durability, it is now rapidly becoming an ecological necessity. As the root meaning of the word ‘sustainability’ suggests, we need products that are going to ‘sustain’. The world is full of enough consumer junk as it is, much of it rapidly decaying and cluttering landfill sites.

To that end, Griffiths has pointed out that for any designer or producer, the client is no longer the client. The planet is the client. Griffith insists that designers must work with their clients to do everything responsible to reduce energy consumption and prevent further global warming. We also need to develop a share economy, he says, where we give up our attachment to ownership and personal property and get used to objects that can be co-owned or borrowed from a central source.

Our own commitment to sustainability at Millican means that we have to ensure we design products without an Achilles’ heel. Every type of material, every design element, needs to be chosen with its continued use in mind. Only in that way can we be sure products will winningly survive years of use.


Our first collection went through nine rounds of sampling before we felt comfortable with, and confident of, our designs. The process taught us a lot.

Our three or four new products, for launch in spring 2010, are going through the same rigorous sampling process. First, we use our samples ourselves, then re-design and re-tweak them until they feel fit for launching. We’re also updating existing products where we’ve had feedback on how we can further improve their function and lifespan.

Heirloom design relies upon a cycle of activity – designing, testing selling, receiving feedback, and making changes. Which is not dissimilar to the teaching cycle that any teacher knows about – devising teaching courses, facilitating them, and working with peer, student and self-evaluation, before modifying courses and beginning the process all over again. Like good teaching, heirloom design takes time and is costly but it’s also a tremendous learning process and a great personal journey for us.

And if we can hand one of our used bags with pride to a grand-child in thirty years time and know that it could be their trusted companion for many years of adventure… what more could we wish for?

Merry Christmas To All

Today we're shipping our final Christmas orders for delivery tomorrow, 24 December.

Kind of hard to believe we've been going for over a year now. And what a year we've had ...

We've got some great memories of our first product arrival (Andy & Simon), our very first customer (Michael Cowan), our first outdoor event (Keswick Mountain Festival), our first retail outlet (Flock-in, Borrowdale) and our first outing in the national press (Sunday Times, 26 July).

Since all these "firsts", we've met over 35,000 of you at all the events and on our website. You've helped Millican to arrive on the scene with a bang and we are truly humbled by the very positive feedback we keep receiving.

After today, Christmas for us will be about closing the front & back doors, to have some time with our family & friends - hopefully Christmas can be the same for you, wherever you are.















A white Christmas?!

Here's to the many adventures 2010 will bring.

Have a great one!

Urban Adventures

Living, as we do, in the Lake District, people tend to assume that we’re rural fanatics. And it’s true that we’ve made a conscious choice to move to the country and embrace a simpler way of life.

But we value our urban adventures too. In fact, we love them. And the greater the contrast with our base here in Keswick, the better. In Cumbria, each village or town may have its own flavour. However, the general look and feel of the place – stonework, scale, foliage – remains the same.

That’s why we love visiting London. We’re always struck by the sheer variety of areas packed tightly together. In London, you can hop on a tube and it pops you out into a different village each time. Perhaps one becomes dulled to this day after day when braving rush-hour crowds. However, we always marvel at the contrast of vintage shops and retro cafes in Angel, the anarchic sprawl of Camden, and the sophisticated delis of Marylebone High Street.


Camden High Street
Photo courtesy of bortescristian

We designed our bags for city use as much as rural adventures. Spilling out of the Intercity train onto the platform from Euston, we always have a mass of papers, i-Pods, clothes and refreshments with us. There’s nothing like a generous shoulder bag or Gladstone bag to carry these things.

We’re also always hit by the information overload coming at us from all angles at Euston Station. Messages on billboards, buses, taxis, shop windows, in free newspapers. No wonder when one looks around that most Londoners march head-down, determined to resist distraction.

It’s probably always been this way for a person going from the countryside to the heart of a city. It must have felt like that for anyone travelling from rural outskirts into the centre of one of our favourite cities – Marrakech.


Photo courtesy of roblisameehan

Pride of place by night is the great central square – Djemma el Fna. Under cover of dark, it transforms into one of the great contemporary wonders of the world – a steaming, aromatic medieval bazaar filled with food stalls, henna painters, acrobats, quack doctors, and performers.


Djemaa el Fna - story tellers

Photo courtesy of Ahron de Leeuw

Worthy of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, the bazaar feels like something out of the Dark Ages. We have also sometimes felt like we’re wandering through a movie set. Only the sores on that beggar over there are real. This quack doctor has a real monkey’s head in his jar. That contortionist truly is wrapping his feet around the back of his neck.

So love our rural retreat as we do, we can’t do without our urban adventures in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and further afield. The souk in Marrakech, the great cafés in Amsterdam, Barcelona’s curvaceous, Gaudi-inspired architecture, Rome’s dense layers of history, the islands around Stockholm, and the avenues and underground of Moscow – these will remain perennial favourites with us.

The landscape, history and people of Keswick remain our home. But we need our city fix from time to time.