Artefact did not begin with a business plan.
It began with a drawer full of underwear I did not really like.
Some pairs looked good but felt uncomfortable. Others lost their shape after a few washes. Waistbands folded, fabrics became thinner and fits that promised support mostly created frustration. Even the more expensive ones often felt strangely disposable.
Still, I kept buying them.
Underwear is one of those products we use every single day but rarely stop to think about. You put it on in the morning, cover it with the rest of your clothes and continue with your life.
Perhaps that is exactly why it interested me.
I have always been fascinated by brands, objects and the worlds people build around them. Not only by how something looks, but by the feeling it creates. The hotel you never forget. A photograph that makes you want to travel. A restaurant where the menu, music and chairs somehow tell the same story.
But I am not a fashion designer.
I had never developed a garment, selected an elastic waistband or discussed the depth of a pouch with a factory. I work in marketing. I know how to tell stories, build ideas and obsess over details that most people probably never notice.
Making underwear was unfamiliar territory.
The idea remained in the back of my mind for a long time. It returned whenever another boxer lost its shape, whenever I read about the amount of synthetic material used in clothing or whenever I saw another product being presented as luxurious while being made as cheaply and quickly as possible.
I did not want to create more clothing simply because the world allowed me to.
If I was going to make something, it had to earn its place.
So I started with the first layer.
There is something honest about underwear. It is worn close to the body, mostly unseen by the outside world. You cannot hide an uncomfortable fabric behind a beautiful campaign. When the fit is wrong, you notice. When the material feels good, you notice that too.
I began researching fabrics, factories and production methods. I sent emails to manufacturers who never replied. I learned about minimum order quantities, pattern costs, cotton certifications and tolerances measured in millimetres.
Eventually, the search led me to Portugal.
The first samples were not perfect.
One was too short. Another felt too loose. The shape at the front needed work. Labels were moved, measurements were adjusted and decisions that seemed insignificant on paper suddenly changed the entire way the boxer felt.
There were moments when I wondered whether I was making everything unnecessarily difficult. It would have been easier to choose an existing model, add a logo and start selling.
But that was never the point.
Artefact was becoming a way of exploring a larger question: can an everyday object be made with more attention?
Not as a revolution. Not as a promise to save the world with a pair of underwear. Simply as an attempt to make something considered. Something produced closer to home, from a fabric I would genuinely want against my own skin, by people whose work deserves to be valued.
Over time, the project also became more personal.
Artefact started to collect everything I am drawn to. Mediterranean summers. European cities. Old photographs. Modernist houses. Tennis courts in the afternoon sun. People who appear confident without needing everyone to notice.
That world is not a marketing layer placed around the product.
It is part of why the product exists.
I want Artefact to feel like something you can enter. A place where underwear, photography, art, travel and design can exist beside each other. Where sensuality is quiet rather than forced. Where quality is not announced in capital letters, but experienced over time.
The first production consists of only one boxer, in one colour.
That is partly a creative choice and partly the reality of starting a brand independently.
There is one product, a Portuguese factory, many late-night decisions and a strong belief that the smallest things deserve attention too.
I still do not consider myself a fashion designer.
I am simply someone who looked at the first thing he put on every morning and thought it could be better.
That seemed like a good enough place to begin.