What Mfpen does right

The Danish brand shows how far you can get with deadstock fabric and a strong POV

Mfpen’s studio-slash-store sits a few floors above an Irish bar on a busy high street in the heart of Copenhagen. In this small apartment space, Sigurd Bank’s brand designs its collections, shoots its lookbooks and sells its pieces to the occasional customer stopping by. On the walls, fabric swatches are pinned next to sketches of silhouettes, just like any design studio. But these swatches are what sets Mfpen apart from the rest of the fashion industry — because almost all of them refer to deadstock fabric, material that’s left over from other brands’ manufacturing.

Sigurd has a background in garment production, and had noticed how huge amounts of perfectly usable, high-end fabric were lying around in the backs of factories — elegant wools and poplins commissioned from Italian mills by luxury brands. He started buying rolls of them to produce his own small but concise collection of loose-fitting menswear. In the years since, Mfpen has grown to a small but profitable business that’s stocked in great retailers all over the world. The brand has no outside backing or investment — Bank has slowly grown the business season after season, and juggled 3 jobs in the early days to keep it all going. He’s due to make his Copenhagen Fashion Week debut in February next year, and has recently started a small line of womenswear as well.

Most Mfpen pieces are limited — produced in runs of 200-300, but some are even more scarce, depending on how much fabric is available (he once emailed me about a coat he’d made in just 12 units, using a dense boiled wool). The brand’s clothing is unfussy but still chic, neither dressed up nor dressed down. The silhouette is loose, almost like a tailoring house designed by skaters (you can tell Sigurd grew up wearing Dickies). There’s a sprinkling of references to post-punk and hardcore, and the collection riffs on a small caste of highly wearable staples that carry an air of cool to them — baggy suit pants, shaggy knits, big coats. “The clothes are cool because most of his interests lie outside of fashion” wrote How Long Gone podcaster Chris Black in a recent GQ piece. A certain kind of customer can see themselves wearing a lot of Mfpen (me included).

The brand’s name is a play on the Danish term for power of attorney —  "med ført pen" — and its labeling often includes the term “Herreekvipering”, meaning a men’s haberdashery, a nod to Sigurd’s grandad’s tailoring shop. His work carries a distinct, DIY ethos that feels highly relevant for the moment we’re in. It’s a case study in how far you can get with leftover fabric and a strong POV.

The production

Mfpen is built on a foundation of deadstock. The label produces 8,000 to 10,000 pieces per season, and around 70% of them are made from surplus fabric from other brands’ production. Initially, it was about keeping costs low, but the enormous amount of unused material out there has allowed the business to grow to a meaningful size while using very little in the way of virgin material.  

Mfpen produces with a small network of 6-7 suppliers, mainly based in Portugal. As the brand’s appeal has grown, so has Sigurd’s capacity for emptying stockrooms — mills have started reaching out to him directly, and he’ll often buy everything they have available. When I spoke to him, he’d just got back to Denmark with swatches for 1200 meters of fabric, with another 2000m of wool and 680m of cotton poplin on the way (he keeps swatches in his studio in Copenhagen, the actual fabric is either shipped directly to his suppliers, or put into storage). All of the brand’s suiting is made this way, and the majority of its shirting. Jersey and denim is a little different — it’s really common for brands to use leftover fabric to make tees and jeans, so it would be a bit disingenuous to call them deadstock. 

Fashion’s economies of scale mean that brands are incentivized to produce more than they really need — which is a major factor behind the industry’s obsession with sales, as I reported a few weeks ago for my piece on the broken economics of Black Friday. If a brand has fabric left over once their production is finished for the season, it often ends up sitting in the supplier’s basement indefinitely. Mfpen’s collections have featured Burberry’s leftover shirting fabric and old Moncler nylon, although often the only way to know who the original customer was is by cross-referencing the catalogue numbers on the roll. A few seasons ago, Sigurd even made a vest from an old Margiela tailoring fabric that literally spelled out the brand’s name in the pinstripe.

As Mfpen has scaled, it’s started to produce pieces in new fabrics. Some of the brand’s staple shirts are based on swatches from the brand’s archive, and this season Sigurd also debuted coats made with a completely undyed wool that comes from an Italian supplier that recycles old sweaters. Any business built from deadstock is going to have some difficulties scaling past a certain point, although Sigurd is happy with the brand’s size — he’s not trying to be big for the sake of being big — and he’s confident that there’s enough leftovers out there to keep him busy for years to come. That’s a sentiment I’ve heard from a lot of people who work this way — another designer who specializes in outerwear once told me he could get hold of 10,000 unused Gore-tex jackets in about a week if he ever needed them. 

When Mfpen shows its collections in Paris, orders often have to be cut to fit with the amount of fabric that’s available. Sometimes the brand can offer the same piece in a similar fabric, but often orders have to be scaled back by Sigurd’s production manager. The limited nature of the product also helps protect the brand from overexposure — Mfpen will never have to think about selling to outlets or doing enormous sample sales. Factories don’t mind working with Mfpen’s smaller numbers because the overall volume is still workable, and because the collection is inherently limited, it’s got a really charming small-batch vibe that feels distinct in a sea of over-merchandised, mass-market clothing. 

It says a lot about the state of fashion’s supply chain that brands like Mfpen can build a business almost entirely using bigger brands’ leftovers. Clearly, it’s an inherently sustainable way of working, although Bank keeps that part of the brand pretty low-key — he’s not shouting about being the world’s most sustainable anything. But his unusual methodology is a huge asset. Alongside the sustainability element, it allows him to make a really good product (because he’s using fabrics from high-end Italian mills) at a really good price (because leftovers are cheap).

How it sells

I could talk all day about Mfpen’s production story, but at the end of the day, the business only works because the clothes are good. To get a bit of insight behind that, I reached out to two buyers who have been having a great time selling Mfpen in high-end retailers.

“It's checking all the boxes, in the way we've seen a shift in consumer habits over the years — this whole idea of being able to dress up but not be overdressed, being dressed up and dressed down in the same look” explained Rikesh Patel, who buys Mfpen for Dover Street Market in London. “Coming out of the pandemic there's been a trend for relaxed contemporary tailoring — the suit is the new tracksuit is the line everyone’s chucking around, but it's true.”

DSM has a small edit of Mfpen in the bottom floor of the London space — where you’ll also find Noah, Palace, Stussy and Kiko Kostadinov. It’s just an in-store only release for the time being, but Rikesh reports that the sell-through is already strong after only a few months in the space. That’s not exactly a surprise for him — he also bought Mfpen for his previous job at Ssense — but the fact that the brand works well across two wildly different retail environments is significant.

“Being in a brick and mortar, you can really appreciate the deadstock materials they're using, but it was successful across the whole range at Ssense as well, which is a real testament — it's not like one shirt or jacket was driving everything.”

“I find the brands that do best for us are brands that have a story along with good design and craftsmanship” wrote Saager ​​Dilawri, who buys Mfpen for Neighbour in Toronto, who sells the brand alongside other high-end / contemporary brands like Acne, Our Legacy, Lemaire and Norse Projects. “The idea of having limited pieces, using deadstock fabric, and having a minimalist design ethos fits with what our customer is looking for and what we feel we can explain and get behind.”

Another factor in Mfpen’s appeal is that it’s realistically priced — something that both Rikesh and Saager mention as a major plus for the brand. Mfpen’s shirts and jeans hit at around €200, the baggy tailored pants land at under €300. A full suit will set you back just under €700. “We could put up our prices, it could be more expensive — when you look at competitors on the market, with our quality, who make in Europe” explained Sigurd. “In no way are our products cheap, but when you put it next to the brands we're next to, we're cheap.”

The reality of the fashion industry is that right now we have a barbell-shaped pricing curve — clothes are either insanely cheap or insanely expensive. That might be a response to the macro conditions of the economy, but there’s still tons of consumers out there who want great clothes but don’t have LVMH money. 

“When you buy deadstock, it's democratic. I don't want to only sell to rich people. The people I want to sell my product to aren't rich, they're artists or musicians or graphic designers. I don't want to be for the few. You pay under €300 for a pair of trousers for us, it's still real money but you're paying for quality. In my opinion, price and style have never gone hand in hand. Just because something's expensive, doesn't mean it's cool. I'd have a hard time charging prices that my friends couldn't afford.” 

The unusual nature of Mfpen’s business is smoothed out by the fact that its POV is so strong. If you built a brand from mix-and-match deadstock but followed every trend out there, it would be confusing and directionless. The reliability of Mfpen’s aesthetic helps build trust and loyalty — so the unusual nature of the brand’s production is an asset, not a challenge. “It's got an element of uniqueness — you'll never get the same thing next season” Rikesh added.

The bigger picture

Mfpen’s production values brings up an interesting question at the heart of sustainability — do customers actually care?

“Yes and no” Sigurd answered. 

“If I work in this industry I have to do the best that I can so I can sleep at night. I want to pollute as little as possible, and of course everyone can say, well stop making clothing, but you can say that to anyone. This is where we found ourselves, this is what we're good at, this is what we're going to focus on — having as little impact as possible. I hope the customer thinks about it, but if not, it is what it is.”

The real learning here is that no matter how sustainable the backend of a business is — whether it’s handmade, upcycled, rental, lower-impact, etc. — it only works when customers really want the product. I’ve heard from so many founders over the years who built a business around a specific technology or solution, but neglected the emotional and cultural aspects of fashion. The biggest success stories — Veja, Ganni, Patagonia — started by filling a very real need for a customer. You can be as mission driven as you want, but you can’t win over shoppers by telling them that the solution to the climate emergency is to wear boring clothes. As I said a hundred times in my book, the real key to shopping sustainably is to just buy clothes that you love, and wear them again and again. And the same rules apply for brands: everyone should be designing clothing with that mindset.

“If you buy an Mfpen trouser or shirt you should buy it because you need it” explained Sigurd. “Everyone who buys new clothes should be buying it because they need it, because it's missing in their lives.”

The future is looking bright for Mfpen. There’s eight people in the company now — two years ago there was just two — and the business is growing around 20% each season. Clearly, Sigurd’s brand is in a good place, but he’s not in a rush. “I’m happy where things are right now, I’m happy with my team, it feels good. I never understood why brands always want to get bigger and bigger.” He explains he wants to go deeper into more materials and styles, rather than blowing up over hundreds of new retailers. Mfpen has started to produce a small collection of womenswear as well, often with fabrics leftover from the men’s production —  “the deadstock of the deadstock” Sigurd jokes.

One thing people need to understand about sustainability is that there are a lot of shoppers who are conscious of what they’re buying, but who don’t want to settle for boring clothes. One way for people to reconcile their ethics with their shopping habits is to really consider who they spend their money with. The thought of buying yet another pair of corporate sneakers starts to feel like a waste when that money could go to someone who’s building a small business with really thoughtful, considered methods. “I hope that more and more people are aware of the fact that there's alternatives when you want to buy a nice shirt from a nice brand” Sigurd explained. “There's different ways of doing it within our category.” 

Mfpen’s backwards way of working is what gives the brand so much of its charm — “the fabrics are the moodboard” as Siguard puts it — and its casual but still tailored aesthetic leaves it open to interpretation. Mfpen is in the sweet spot of being directional if the customer wants to be (wear a tie to a club!) or basic (here’s some great jeans to wear to the office). There’s a total absence of trends as well — Bank explains that he’ll only ever buy a fabric if he knows it’ll still look good in five years time. It’s a back-to-basics approach to clothing that really makes sense for the moment we’re in.

When fashion is in such an excessive place, brands stand out when they keep their feet on the ground.