Why Ayr Space Exists
Ayr Space began with a fairly simple idea: I wanted the freedom to create.
Not for a client. Not to answer somebody else’s brief. Not because an algorithm suggested it was what people wanted to see – I wanted somewhere for my own ideas to exist.
For most of my creative life, I have been fascinated by storytelling. I don’t remember a time I didn’t have a pencil and sketchbook with me. Countless hours were spent drawing in the back of my parents’ car, sat in a bar or restaurant, or doodling in the back of my textbooks – much to the annoyance of my teachers, who would regularly send me out of class for it.
From there, I went on to study construction & engineering at college before discovering interior design at university, but it wasn’t until that same course gave me the chance to experience set design for film, TV and theatre that I really discovered where I wanted to be.
Within the creative industries, an idea is rarely communicated through one thing alone. It can emerge through imagery, sound or colour. Through objects, locations, light and atmosphere. Individually they might seem insignificant, but together they can make you feel something.
That way of thinking never really left me.
I tend to see the world through a cinematic lens. A quiet street at the right time of day. The light hitting an old building. An empty beach after everyone has gone home. From the typography on a menu to a photograph that immediately transports you somewhere else.
Ordinary things can become significant when they carry a feeling and that is where Ayr Space really comes from.
A Space to Create
The name has always had more than one meaning.
AYR – All Year Round.
SPACE – somewhere to think, experiment and create.
Ayr Space became my own creative space. A place where different disciplines could exist alongside each other without needing to be separated into categories. Rather than choosing between them, I wanted to build something where they could all become part of the same world.
The garment might be the physical object you take home, but the idea surrounding it can be much bigger – clothing simply becomes the canvas.
Built Around Feeling
Cinema has probably influenced Ayr Space more than fashion ever has. Not because I want the brand to imitate films, but because I have always been fascinated by their ability to make us feel something. The combination of image, sound, atmosphere and storytelling can stay with you long after the film itself has finished.
That same feeling often becomes the starting point for the way I work.
I rarely create in silence. There is almost always a soundtrack playing somewhere in the background, and music provides much of the emotional weight behind an idea. Sometimes a design can begin with nothing more than the feeling a particular song creates.
Finding the right track can completely change the direction of something, and I often find myself trying to translate that same emotion into something visual.
It doesn’t always come from music. A landscape can make you feel incredibly small. A photograph can transport you somewhere else. A few seconds of silence can create more tension than dialogue ever could. Sometimes it is difficult to even explain why something resonates with you – you just feel it.
That is the part I’m interested in.
Great storytelling leaves something behind, and that is what I want Ayr Space to do.
The clothes, photography, packaging, website and physical shop are all different parts of the same idea. I want them to feel as though they belong to the same universe, each contributing something to a larger story.
Sometimes that story is obvious. Sometimes it is deliberately left unexplained.
The longer you spend with something, the more you discover.
Nostalgia, Without Living in the Past
Nostalgia not only plays a huge part in the brand, but in my own life.
I have always been drawn to things that seem to carry emotional weight – places we’ve travelled to, things we watched growing up, a box of old photographs (yes, I’m that old) and those strangely specific memories that stay with us for reasons we don’t completely understand.
But nostalgia, to me, isn’t about recreating the past. It is about remembering how something felt, and that distinction is important.
The faded photograph, the boarding pass kept in a drawer from a favourite holiday, the song associated with a particular summer or film you fell in love with, memories spent with friends at various concerts and festivals.
They become fragments of time and place.
Built for Escapism
There is another idea sitting underneath almost everything I create: escapism.
It is why the phrase Built for Escapism has become such an important part of Ayr Space. Escapism doesn’t necessarily mean travelling thousands of miles or disappearing somewhere exotic.
Sometimes it is much smaller than that.
Putting your headphones on or watching a film. Walking along the coastline or going for a surf. Driving without much of a destination. Finding somewhere quiet and losing yourself in an idea – For a little while, you are elsewhere.
I think creativity can do exactly the same thing. Ayr Space is my version of that escape.
It gives me somewhere to explore ideas without having to ask whether they fit neatly into a particular category. One collection might begin with aviation, another with an old photograph, a piece of music, a place, a memory or simply a feeling I can’t quite describe yet.
The destination changes – the perspective remains the same.
Why Clothing?
I want to make things that people keep. An item someone might pull from the back of their wardrobe years from now and immediately be taken back to a particular place, a moment in their life or simply a feeling.
Maybe it reminds them of a summer, a person, somewhere they travelled or a period of their life that meant something to them – for whatever reason.
Clothes are there through the good times and the difficult ones. They quietly become part of our memories, carrying stories we never intended them to.
I like the idea that something I created could one day do the same.
Building a World
Over time, seven years to be exact, I realised that Ayr Space wasn’t really about creating individual products at all. Every collection adds another chapter to the story. Every photograph, song, film and object can contribute something to it. There is no finished version of what I create, only the next page of a broader story.
And perhaps that’s the point.
Ayr Space gives me the freedom to keep exploring the things that have fascinated me throughout my life – cinema, design, nostalgia, travel, atmosphere, imagination and storytelling – without knowing exactly where each idea will lead.
It is everything I’ve seen, drawn, listened to, watched, smelled or tasted. Somewhere or something I remember, and occasionally even someplace that never existed at all.
Ultimately, Ayr Space is a perspective. A way of looking at ordinary things and imagining something more.
We are not simply designing clothing.
We are building a world.