Last week I was contacted by Jay, the founder of On the Rise and asked if I would like to feature one of their sweatshirts on Instagram. Would I ever?! I've loved On the Rise for a good while now, first seeing one of their sweatshirts on Erica Davis of The Edited almost a year ago now - you can read her post here.
Quite often sweatshirts can look great from the outside but can be scratchy on the inside. The first thing that I felt when I opened the sweatshirt was its inside. This one is soft and fluffy and if anyone is anything like me, comfort and snuggly things reign supreme. Plus, they have well and truly been put through their paces on the washing and tumble drying front and they come out with top marks.
A Father of four girls, Jay initially started by sourcing a one off sweatshirt with "Kensal" on the front, for one of his daughter's to wear to her gym class. The concept quickly took off and On the Rise's "Love Thy Neighbourhood" sweatshirts now feature the names of different areas within London including Dulwich, Primrose, Muswell, Highgate and Camden as well as featuring areas of New York and Paris.
In addition to featuring suburbs of various cities, On the Rise also makes Big Letter Initial Sweatshirts...
The sweatshirt that I am wearing is the star sweatshirt plus there is also this gorgeous heart sweatshirt
...and who could resist the flamingo love sweatshirt?
The great thing about the On the Rise sweatshirts is that, in the words of Jay, "they can be thrown on for going down the boozer, or if you've not washed your hair for 3 days and you're on the school run the flouro lifts you" and of course there's the whole idea of dressing something glitzy down with a sweatshirt - so I'll be wearing mine with my silky pleated skirt too.
I love a good story - the idea that someone comes up with an idea which takes off in a very organic way which the creator never planned. And that's the beauty about On the Rise - their sweatshirts somehow cleverly hit the spot by tapping into people's affinity to the area in which they live (or into their love for their initials...or hearts/starts/flamingos) - which I think, having watched closely what people buy over the last few years, is quite a few of us.
