You can trace my early sense of style — and the quiet discipline of taking pride in one’s appearance — to my mother’s side of the family. At the age of 14, my grandfather, Arthur Craggs, began working as a coal miner, just two weeks after losing his older brother Ralph (19) in a roof fall in Thornley Colliery. Short and stocky in stature, he was the ideal build for a miner, with great strength in his torso and arms - a legacy of a lifetime of hard physical graft and a youth spent on many gym activities, including weight lifting. He was assigned the role of ripper/hewer, working at 'the cutting edge' of the coal face. It was a job that demanded both strength and grit. He possessed both in abundance, along with a natural handsomeness that never went unnoticed.
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But what defined him was not only how he worked — it was how he emerged from it. After a day in the pit, he relished the ritual of cleaning up and dressing in his finest clothes. In an era that would not have looked out of place in an episode of Peaky Blinders, he carried himself with the same sharp confidence as Thomas Shelby — tailored, composed, and quietly commanding. He moved through the world like a peacock in full regalia.

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So it felt less like coincidence and more like a final flourish when a Peacock Butterfly appeared at his funeral — an extraordinary sight in midwinter Derbyshire.

Long before Jason Chen coined the term Gorpcore to describe an iteration of streetwear built on layering technical fabrics and outerwear garments over more basic organic textures, my Uncle - Roy Craggs - was living it, without the label. While trends were being theorised, Roy was wearing the real thing, working as a Peak District Ranger in Derbyshire, where those layers weren’t aesthetic, they were essential.
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Fashion often chases what it later calls “effortless.” In truth, that ease usually belongs to people who never set out to be stylish at all. They dress for function, for weather, for terrain - and in doing so, they create a kind of unstudied authority. Roy is one of them - with a quiet composure inherited from his father.
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Long before outdoor brands became cultural currency, he wore them because they worked. That quiet practicality - Gore-Tex jackets, wool sweaters, denim - has undoubtedly shaped my own style and wardrobe. My instinct for pieces from brands like The North Face and Columbia Sportswear, and for building outfits through layered textures rather than ornament, traces back to watching him move through the hills - prepared, understated, and entirely authentic.

Without question, the greatest influence on my sense of style—and my lifelong relationship with clothing—was my mother, Mary Revill (née Craggs). She was a beautiful woman, but more than that, she possessed a natural, unforced elegance. Her wardrobe blended carefully sourced vintage pieces with garments she designed and made herself, a discipline she began at art college and carried with her for life.
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An exceptional and well loved Primary School Teacher, she had striking features - high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, long dark hair - and that same quiet 'Craggs' confidence that made everything she wore feel deliberate. Leather jackets softened by time, silver jewellery, scarves tied just so. An Art graduate, she understood texture, silhouette, balance. Even the scent of YSL Rive Gauche became part of the atmosphere she created. Nothing was loud, yet everything made an impression.
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As a child, she dressed me with that same care and attention before I was old enough to understand what she was teaching me. By the time I began curating my own wardrobe, the foundation had already been laid: clothes mattered. Not as vanity, but as expression. As intention.
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Whatever eye I have for proportion, detail, or quiet statement pieces traces back to her. The aesthetic sensibility, the instinct to mend rather than discard, to shape something until it feels entirely your own - that came from my mother.