I spent the early morning under the engine of my classic air-cooled Volkswagen van adjusting the rockers and screwing the idle jets. I had a barbeque to attend, and I was the pitmaster. I eventually got on the road knowing I had a 16 hour cook ahead of me. I spent the day feeding oak embers to a 55-gallon pit barrel smoking a beautiful Irish grass-fed brisket. At 9pm after serving 40 people I sat down with a Yellow Spot and a brisket bap. I was wearing an old t-shirt that no longer had any shape. The design was a random aspirational campervan image with some happy clappy expression underneath. It looked crap and it reeked of smoke and oil. Another old tee for the bin. No big loss, it was ok, that’s how it is. Three for a tenner in Tesco and fuck the environmental consequences.

But it wasn’t ok. I sat looking at the 50-year-old van that was currently doing a nixer as a selfie booth and the smoker barbeque that was the hot topic of conversation. I realised my clothes were out of touch with what I valued in life. I crave top quality long lasting classic designs in everything I buy from cars to tools to barbeques to household furniture. Why couldn’t I buy a t-shirt that worked as hard for me as my van and my smoker did and looked just as good?

I sat there staring at my van trying to think of a brand name that would encapsulate the ethos. Like Volkswagen, the people’s car. What would be the clothing equivalent of that. A guy beside me with some sort of antipodean accent said, “I like your tin top mate”. A tin top is a van with a standard roof rather than a pop-up campervan style roof. I replied and told him that I believe that the strength, classic style, and simplicity just make a tin top a favourite for me. That was it.

At the heart of Tin Top there is a guiding principle that every item of clothing we make should keep three promises. It should wear well, it should look good, and it should do no harm.

Wear Well

We print our designs on a mixture of premium blanks and custom-made clothing. A blank is a plain t-shirt ready for printing and we source ours from Belgian company Stanley/Stella. We also work with a Portuguese clothing company to produce garments to our own specifications. Artwork is added by hand using traditional screen printing by artisan printers in England and Ireland.

Look Good

We work with talented Irish designers to produce artwork and illustrations inspired by our travels, classic vehicles, and their wildest imagination. Every design we commission is a unique piece of art, but they are all on brand and they all reflect our core values.

Do No Harm

Fast fashion is killing our planet. Our cotton base material is sourced from Fair Wear and Global Organic Textile Standard suppliers in Bangladesh. We only work with suppliers that guarantee no child labour, a living wage, safe and healthy working conditions, reasonable hours of work, and no discrimination. We use ecofriendly inks and compostable packaging.