Alastair Rae

Alastair Rae met co-founder James Shaw in their first year halls at Manchester Metropolitan University, where the pair bonded over a shared frustration at the lack of well-made, unbranded British menswear. They launched Albam in 2006 with a deliberately small capsule — a great white tee, a knit, a raincoat — made by Midlands artisans in traditional British fabrics. The brand grew into a quietly influential workwear-leaning label with shops in London, and Rae has continued to expand the Albam universe with Albam UK as a heritage-anchored sub-line, working with the same network of small British factories he sourced for the original collection.