Toby Clark is a ecological fashion designer and founder of ‘Toby etc.‘ – a design & brand strategy company with a reputation for building niche international brands, centred in nature. 

An Ambassador for the Campaign For Wool NZ (2020-2025), Toby focuses his interests on sustainable, natural and renewable materials, that work in harmony with nature’s ecosystem. 

A founder of the Toby Clark label, co-founder of Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, co-founder of Heartfelt Repairs Co. and co-founder of Pas De Nom ~ eau de parfum healing scents, Toby is widely experienced in the fashion & textiles industry. His design methodology has guided influential clothing brands. His decade leading the design for Margaret Howell received three nominations by the British Fashion Council for ‘Menswear Designer Of The Year’ at the British Fashion Awards.

A proven specialist in menswear – with a reputation for creating authentic products and original, future-thinking concepts – Toby’s intuitive, evolutional approach, helps grow loyal consumers.

Throughout his career, Toby has felt a deep affinity with natural materials, particularly wool. Having learnt to hand-knit aged 8, under his NZ mother’s tuition. This early fascination with transformative textiles, prompted a career in fashion. After graduating from the Royal College Of Art in London 1993, Toby started his own designer clothing label, becoming – Welsh Fashion Designer of The Year – at the Welsh Fashion Awards, held at the Savoy Hotel, London. His launch collection sold exclusively to Barneys New York – Madison Ave, Browns Of South Molton St – London, Saks Fifth Avenue and Anglobal of Japan – being selected by the International Wool Secretariat for a showcase at Premiere Vision in Paris.

In recent years Toby has renewed his love for wool, becoming an Ambassador for the Campaign For Wool NZ.  The CFW is a not-for-profit organisation with global reach, founded and initiated by its patron HM King Charles III.

Toby is a co-founder of Heartfelt Repairs Co. a start-up brand, with a mission to channel creativity in repair by empowering the end-user to get involved. To reduce the amount of Western clothing ending up in toxic landfills in Ghana, strewn along the once pristine beaches of Accra. The HQ of the amazing Liz Rickett’s The Or Foundation.

As a gentle activist of environmental causes, sometimes eco punk, Toby favours brands with an authentic ecological purpose and who respect nature and our planet’s finite resources. Particularly brands adopting a new approach to consumerism by intentionally reducing consumption, implementing degrowth strategies and using high value circular materials from biowaste.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Toby expressed his strong personal resistance to the fashion industry’s insatiable demand for new products in new textile materials.  To emphasise this feeling, Toby adopted a radical activist approach, wearing the – Same Clothes Everyday – for 467 days. Washing the clothing items in rain water and drying them with the sun’s solar energy. Wearing a single set of clothing, Toby aimed to offset the negative impact he had personally created as a designer, estimated to be in the region of 500,000 products manufactured between 1990 to 2017. Which contributed to a plethora of clothing the world’s consumers did not necessarily need, but rather desired as luxury items.  His Same Clothes Everyday manifesto was admired by world renowned Trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort who invited Toby to be a guest speaker for the World Hope Forum. 

To underline his design philosophy, Toby has written articles for academia, authoring ‘The Provenance Of Fashion’ published by Bloomsbury. This featured the critical concept of certifiable transparency within the supply-chain, using Blockchain technology to trace each transitional process.  This the brainchild of Jessi Baker MBE the founder of Provenance.org

While an art student in Bournemouth, Toby’s written thesis on ‘Uniforms’ turned into a collaboration with fellow art student Wolfgang Tillmans. Tillmans the now world renowned, Turner Prize artist.  Work from this collaboration on Uniforms has sold through Sothebys to private collectors.

Having established a career as a clothing designer and brand consultant, Toby continues to work within sustainable and ethical parameters, seeking to preserve the natural balance of our eco-system and aiming to bring city dwellers closer to nature.

To review a fuller background of Toby’s career, please click on the Biography section.

A company profile and curriculum vitae is available on request.

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“I think of myself as a Beta, Zeta, Omega sort of male and an arbiter of beautifully crafted objects. I guess a fashion philosopher of sorts.

Guided by the finest natural materials, I create honest, functional, design products that are quality driven. Good design embraces the notion of extreme comfort, as well as being in harmony with nature.  I also carefully examine any design engineering fault-lines to seek solutions. In essence, to build and design a system before the product.

My career has tended to be entrepreneurial, developing original concepts for niche brands. I resonate with brands who embed a sense of purpose into their design discipline. That provides an important motivation for their brand existence. I admire creators of beautifully crafted products that are human-centered. Who have a direct correlation to the end-user’s sense of satisfaction as well as consideration for our planets.

My design approach is quite purist. Starting by quietly observing the inner culture of a brand organisation. I seek to contribute meaningful creative solutions, which do not attempt to reinvent the wheel. I believe the simpler and more harmonious the design, the better it will be. The antithesis of Sisyphus labouring over and over with his hill boulder.

I prefer to focus on the social benefits that good design can bring to the end user, rather than the profitable gain for shareholders. I help and mentor young designers starting their own brands and who share a desire to create an environmentally sound footprint. 

I value authenticity and integrity over imitation. I feel attracted to people who possess a natural, incidental style, rather than those who seek to draw attention to themselves or chase consumer trends. I resist technology that seeks to replicate human attributes and I feel a great aversion to the A.I. world of human avatars. That seem destined to infiltrate our future society. Soulmachines is not a cool company.

I endorse holistic design-thinking. During the design creation phase I consider the environmental impact and social responsibility within the supply chain and strive to reduce the need to discard or throwaway clothing & textile products. I do this by creating timeless products that are quality driven and encourage their frequent use and lifetime repair. I personally enjoy repeatedly wearing the same set of clothes until they physically wear out. I believe it puts less stress on the planet. I also find the process of identifying fault-lines through repetitive wear incredibly informative as a designer.

My principal desire is to help bring progressive change to the fashion industry. I share the overriding concerns about global supply chains that often conceal how and where goods are made. The willing instigators of such practises, often adopt a blind moral code, and fail to consider the impact either on our planet, or how the garment workers are treated within the manufacturing process.  I hope to bring behavioural change to consumers who view consumption of new materials as an anti depressive. This sadly leads to the emergence of throwaway fashion, with huge volumes of clothing textiles dumped in bins and landfills, leeching toxic chemicals into the soil and water table in faraway continents. 

Am passionate about ‘localism’ in business models and concepts that directly connect people to their home place. I consider this a type of anti homogenized activism that subdues the reliance on the aviation industry and benefits our wider social wellbeing. 

I take inspiration from many different aspects of our living world and am fascinated by New Zealand’s tuataras. These fascinating creatures are the only living species on earth to have survived, when the dinosaurs died out. Born with a third eye for extra periphery vision as a light sensor, with the ability to hear without external ears and hearts that beat just once per minute, they remain our planet’s greatest survivors. While the dinosaurs once dominated the landscape and demanded all of the attention with their sheer size, they did not possess the little tuataras clever evolutionary ability to adapt. Especially to climate change. The tuataras built an evolution system. A lesson we can all try to learn as climate change is now upon us. “