Unique pieces

The kick-start for Reid came after he felt the quality of his favourite sleepwear brand had started to deteriorate.

‘I started noticing the quality going down, prices going up, and the styles and fabrics getting rather boring, my friend said ‘put your money where your mouth is, we know you can sew, do your own brand’,’ he said.

Seven years later that idea became a reality when he launched his self-titled brand and website in November.

Reid does not stock standard sizes, with each garment hand sewn and custom made to the individual’s measurements. ‘Until someone orders I don’t sit at the sewing machine because they choose their own length, they choose whether they want pockets or not, whether they want a drawstring, button fly open or sewn closed and so on,’ he said.

‘When people put the products on, they fit exactly how they want them to fit, there’s no need to take them an alteration to have them taken up.’

Despite having a passion for design since Year 8, the Greenwood resident felt discouraged from the profession and so continued into a banking career path but said he would not change his past.

‘Do I regret it? No,’ he said.

‘I’m a person who believes, regardless of whether we go through good times or bad times, everything that has happened to me has led me to be the person I am today and I’m happy with who I am today.’

‘That old wise saying ‘life starts at 40’, literally for me it did, I re-embraced my passion and said I’m not going to retire in a bank, I’m going to follow my dreams, if it fails it fails, if it succeeds it succeeds.’Reid primarily makes shorts for summer but is in the process of expanding his design for children and longer patterns for winter. Claire Ottaviano