He's designed for rap megastar Puff Daddy and worked in a cabin for Rip Curl. Now Ross McPhie enjoys success with his own label

IT’S the wittiness of North East clothing retailer, I Sunk Your Battleship, which is proving popular among its growing fan base. Dubbed as a kind of ‘cheekiness for the thinking man’, the brand has built a strong reputation for its subversive streetwear with T-shirts, hoodies and beanies featuring the old semaphore language – forgotten Naval iconography using flags spelled out in swearwords. The owner might know what the flags mean and the odd ex-Naval grandpa, but, on the surface, it looks like the cool streetwear it is.

And its head of design Ross McPhie knows all about cool. The 38-year-old was the design director for rap singer Puff Daddy’s clothing brand in New York for a year. (“It was… crazy,” he says, cryptically.) He’s also worked for sportswear firm Rip Curl, surf brand O Neill, and Nike, where he was design lead for the training kits worn by teams Nike was sponsoring, such as the England football team.

It was when he met his wife, Sarah, 35, that the pair settled down in her native North-East and she encouraged him to launch his own menswear brand. The couple, who have sons, Samson, 22 months, and Fred, nine weeks, now run their business on the edge of Durham City.

“For years I’d been working for other people,” says Ross, who hails from Glasgow. “But Sarah really encouraged me to work for myself. We started out as a design consultancy and went on to develop a small collection of T-shirts which were the backbone of our first collection. I took the idea of the semaphore language and tweaked it to make it more interesting. It wasn’t my intention to be offensive – I suppose like many other grown ups I still appreciate a little potty humour.”

An old contact persuaded Ross to show his collection at press week in London and his fledgling label had positive feedback from magazines such as ID and Dazed and Confused. Since then, the business has received an injection of capital from NorthStar Ventures’ Finance and the support of Durham Creatives, the Business Durham-backed organisation which provides free workshops and mentoring to creative start-ups. I Sunk Your Battleship’s T-shirts, beanies and hoodies are worn by men and women and have even been spotted on design-conscious babies too.

Now Ross has produced a limited edition pocketed T-shirt collection for the dapper, slightly more mature customer, incorporating different Liberty Art Fabrics. The Life, Love and Liberty collection is a slight move away from the streetwear, but the principles remain the same – good design all made in the North-East.

“It was an easy decision for us to work with Liberty Art Fabrics,” says Ross. “There’s nothing like it that perfectly exemplifies British creativity. Exploring their collection of beautiful colours, details and irreverent twists made it a perfect fit with our way of looking at the world. We want to take our customers with us on our journey.”

The brand is proud of its Made in Britain tag and uses the talents of social enterprise hub, Weave in Lynemouth, Northumberland, which is home to independent textile designers, for their embellishment work, as well as printers and suppliers in Washington, Tyne and Wear. “We’re proud to work and support Weave," says Ross. "It’s a great set-up as they bring clothing manufacturing skills back to an area of the UK which was once at the thriving heart of the textile industry. They have fantastic equipment and they have the skills. The quality is superb.”

Ross is keen to keep the collections small and exclusive and build the brand online. They are stocked in some stores in the North-East – such as Capology and Whosit & Whatsit in Newcastle – but with the might of social media and fashion bloggers behind it, the brand is gaining fans across the world.

So what’s next? Ross is working on a new ‘Creatures of the Deep’ collection exploring the ancient myths and legends shared by seamen, and has plans for a range of backpacks featuring his distinctive, semaphore designs. Just don’t show the latter to your grandpa.

  • The Life, Love and Liberty collection is available from isunkyourbattleship.co.uk. T-shirts are priced at £35 each.