Brethren Apparel: The Origin Story Part 1

Brethren Apparel is a riders clothing company formed in the spring of 2013, born out of 2 lightly addled brains, brother and sister Kyte. One was a motivated student showing a gift for needlework, whilst the other, a pure snow bum stewing in a mountain town near you. 

Heavily influenced by skateboard and snowboard sub-cultures, Aisling and Chris are part of those who believe that this is a lifestyle and not just a sport. They ride, and they always will. They appreciate that so much of the experience is the travel, the scenery and more importantly, the homies you get to share it with. So, if you find yourself more at home enjoying the mountain air or the smooth trannies of the skatepark, you might find your part of the Brethren too. Welcome to the brotherhood.

Part 1: Aisling Kyte

How are you doing now?
Like everyone, we're having a pretty difficult year. We're doing our best to navigate Brethren through the pandemic and we hope to survive, but our main thoughts are with everyone who's lost friends and family. To us, that's ultimately the only thing that matters. 

What's the vision for the future of Brethren?

We've never really been big dreamers. We're far more about living in the now. We try to create gear that we love and are proud of and that we hope other people are stoked on as well. But if we're going for big vision a Brethren HQ Mountain spot/hostel/bar where everyone can come and play would be pretty epic. 

What's your favourite thing about running Brethren?
There's definitely loads of highs and lows from running your own business. My personal favourite is choosing our own schedule. If we have a week of great snow or sun we can flip our schedules, ride all day and work in the evenings, but it means we have to be quite disciplined! (Anyone who's ever met Chris will surely realise what an accomplishment this is haha) And also the messages we get from people supporting what we're doing. We love our customers and hearing happy words from you always brightens our day.

Being brother and sister and working together, how often do you want to kill each other or is it smooth sailing?

Pass.... Haha. It must be mostly good though as my housemate is always asking how we get anything done when all she hears is laughing all day. We're pretty lucky that if we do get annoyed, we can tell the other to "please fuck off" and then be completely fine again 5 minutes later.

Favourite pieces of the current collection?

I've always been a big fan of the Shredduh hoodies. They're so versatile to other activities other than snowboarding. Also the chubes. I'd advise grabbing one quickly... they're being discontinued next year. But number 1 for me right now has to be the softshell joggers. They're so comfortable that you forget you're wearing pants. I regularly forget to take them off post snowboarding and am still in them at bed time.

Famous last words.