Fashion Feature: Blurb Clothing

Blurb Clothing is the entrepreneurial fashion endeavour of first year UCL Psychology and Language Science student, Brendan Dunlop, and his friend and business partner Alex Benjamin, a Performing Arts student at City and Islington College. Their casual and relaxed graphic tees promote an urban look, and Blurb is fast becoming a go-to brand for campus-friendly style. Read on to find out more about how the design duo set up their clothing line.

Alex Benjamin (left) and Brendan Dunlop (right)

How and when did this all start? Why fashion?

Brendan: We started our brand in February earlier this year so it is still rather young!

Alex: It mainly involved me showing Brendan some design ideas I had and then we partnered together and it just went from there.

Do you both design? Where do you find inspiration for your designs and slogans?

Alex: I’m a dancer so my I get some of my inspiration from my work and it’s quite personal. It comes quite naturally; sometimes I’m just sitting using Photoshop and an idea will suddenly hit me.

Brendan: Yes, we both design and we both run the business. I’m trying to market ourselves a lot on Facebook to get our designs noticed rather than pushing for sales. It’s more about establishing our name first.

Is your clothing is unisex, and does it appeal more to men or women?

Alex: Our clothes fit women as much as they do on men.

Brendan:  We’ve also found that probably about 60-70% of t-shirts we’ve sold so far have actually been to women! They seem to appeal a lot to females.

Do you feel that what you are currently studying has benefited the brand at all?

Alex: I’m more of an artistic person and I’m studying dance, so in that sense yes, it is useful.

Brendan: I’d say that very little of my degree comes into building the brand apart from persuasion which I learn in Psychology. It’s quite useful on the selling front! It gives you an idea of how to present a product to people. Apart from that, I’ve always had a flair and drive for business. Starting up the brand was very different from studying but it’s nice to have this on the side.

In the future do you see yourself working in fashion or developing the brand further, or is this more of a hobby?

Brendan: I’d like to think that we could make this into something a lot bigger. But for the moment we’ve only just started so we’re not at that stage yet!

Alex: Blurb is the creative outlet that we both have and share. I think we will both follow up on our chosen career paths but this will be that something extra which we have for fun and that we can share with other people. I’d love to get to the stage where you walk down the street and see people wearing your clothing.

What are your plans after graduation?

Brendan: I want to get onto the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology training programme to become a clinical psychologist, so my plans are very different from fashion.

Alex: I want to choreograph as much as I can, possibly move to LA…who knows?

How would you define London’s fashion scene and how does your brand fit into its aesthetic?

Alex: I find London’s fashion very diverse; it tends to focus on the individual in particular. Our main target audience is students of a broad category so that sort of fashion is very relaxed and t-shirty with an indie feel.

Brendan: Yes, definitely young people. In terms of the London fashion scene as a whole, it’s always changing. So far, we’ve had our first batch of t-shirts but hopefully by August we’ll release another set to fit in with that constantly changing culture that London fashion has.

Alex: Eventually we will have different seasons but right now we are just finding our feet and building the brand. We want to get to the stage where people will look at us and think ‘they started this trend’; that’s what we’re after when it comes London. We aren’t an Ikea type of brand looking to cater for everyone, we just want to express our own style and let people decide if they are in with us or not.

And last of all, why the name ‘Blurb’?

Brendan: I think the name comes from thinking of the blurb of a book…when you read the blurb you get a feel for what the book is about, and if it is a good book it makes you want to read on. We want people to look at our products and want to know more about us. Other than that, it’s a cool-sounding name!

Buy Blurb Clothing online at their website    

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