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Our Story
The Original Ethical Brand Since '88
That's a bold claim... Who are these guys ? What’s the story ?
Created by Mark Bloom (aka Joe Komodo) - KOMODO began life at an extraordinary moment in our history coinciding with an unlikely trip to Bali. You could say we are a brand born out of a backpack.
It was summer 1988 and the headstrong spirit of British youth culture was taking a leap into the world of Acid House, it was a social revolution and we loved it. We were a young mixed gang of mates, we loved travelling and finding colourful interesting fabrics and twisting them into the English eccentric styles that were so iconic to that hazy mazy movement.
Our motivation was to stand out, to be different. To be fun and to represent the amazing people and their talents we found in Asia, we really loved them. We worked so hard with them, fixing challenges and taking their traditional techniques, twisting them to invent new ones, to bring something fresh to the insatiable market of Great British Street Fashion that was loved around the world!
A long time ago, in a land far far away... our founder Joe was a teenage backpacker looking for adventure in southeast Asia. He was meandering through the eastern isles en route to Flores in search of rare woven fabrics to trade, when he was dropped off into the sea near the shores of a barren desolate pre-historic island, home to the world’s largest lizards. There he had a close shave with a Dragon twice his size and she left a lasting impression!
He journeyed on over land and sea for another year before taking the trans-Siberian railway back to Europe.
Image: Joe surfing Kuta Beach, Bali
Back home in London a couple of years later and an idea came along... using discarded old jeans as his material, a patchwork jacket was literally cut ‘n’ pasted together on the kitchen table, and it looked so good that for a year or so, making them up in the east end workshop and selling them in the west end jean shops was a cracking business. Today we would evoke the virtues of up-cycling and home-made hand crafted tailoring, but these words and concepts were just not recognised in those days, so we just made our 80s chic ‘Yakit Yakit Jakits’. However, fashion fades and we were a one trick pony, it looked to be all over, but then the stars aligned…
A box arrived in the post, it was covered in colourful stamps from Bali, sent 3 months before by Joe’s younger sister and inside were loud ‘n’ freaky surf shorts. It was summer, we didn’t know of any surfers, but it was 1988, some of our mates were DJs and England was in the early days of a social revolution!
Image: Joe Komodo (cowboy) with his mates at Komodo HQ, Hampstead 1989. Far left is Adge who still makes our Java beach shoes to this day...
Acid House with its addictive beats, its inclusive friendly vibes and its distinctive youthful smiley dress code was spreading across the land, Komodo was born into this euphoric counter-culture and off we went on a magical mystery tour. We collaborated with Soul II Soul and with the infamous Raves of Sunrise and Back to the Future. We made friends with our competitors in the normally frosty world of fashion designers. Famous DJs including JudgeJules, Norman Jay, Fat Boy Slim and The Chemical Brothers played with us at our legendary parties (we even had Imagination play a live set for us in Paris) and we sold our funky threads to cool Indie shops all round the world – it was fun!
The government of the day was not enjoying our spirited tribe of ravers and so they rushed through some dodgy legislation to stop the huge gatherings that were by now dominating youth culture and the tabloid press. So, we supported the rallying of the troops for the ‘Freedom to Party’ march which filled TrafalgarSquare in the spring of 1990. The Police got their powers, but life went on and England’s reputation for iconic street styles and new music was leading the world.
Image: Freedom To Party Campaign flyer
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Grunge, Brit-pop and Girl Power ruled the following decade and Komodo was a very happy small part of it all. In those days we had visits from The Happy Mondays, Take That, The Spice Girls and Jamiroquai... it was all just rum! Eco, ethical fashion was still hardly talked about, but all the while we had stuck with our family run small factories in Bali, Kathmandu and India, who had made our earliest stuff... it just seemed fair and right to stick with them, and use the skilled artisans with their handicrafts and natural yarns and fabrics we found there... loyalty is a rare commodity in fashion, but we like it!
The public loved us and we went out to meet them at every chance we got. So many great memories from all the brilliant festivals up and down the land... Glastonbury was a particular favourite, with us setting up stalls there year after year. We were regulars at The Clothes Show live, had market stalls in Camden and Portobello, and shops from Covent Garden to Tokyo! We just rolled with it!
Image: Glastonbury 1997
We worked to develop and promote hemp fibres, bamboo, hand spun cruelty free wool and were fully invested in the earliest days of organic cotton. We presented Tibetan designers and their style at Paris fashion fairs, we climbed mountains and raised funds to build schools, planted trees and save Orangutans... all thanks to the support of our lovely followers and friends.
As we've grown out of our party days, our focus is more on cleaner fabrics and better processes and along with a few other brands pushed the issues, led the way and banged the drum for what gradually became known as eco, green, sustainable or ethical fashion. Now, finally, the world is catching on and thankfully more brands, stores and platforms across the fashion spectrum have heard the call to shape up and take responsibility for their heavy footprints... it’s high time!
We feel whilst it’s our privilege to dress up in style, it must be our responsibility to ensure that style is sustainable, otherwise you can only look good on the outside. In the end that’s basically what we're all about !
Images from the Komodo archive...
Komodo sailing team / British Olympic snowboarder Jenny Jones & friends / Jamiroquai / Joe Komodo - The first snowboarder in Tibet...