Written by Menswear Style in Interviews on the 21st January 2022

SWAY London is a new brand born from the ashes of Lockdown with the aim of becoming an internationally recognised, luxury lifestyle streetwear clothing and accessories brand. A distinctive casual to smart causal collection that is alluring, embodying the feminine and masculine with elements of sport. Brainchild of founder Mark Winter who, together with his business partners Terence Burrows and Pino Grillo, have more than 50 years’ experience working with major brands and events. SWAY London offers a fresh, new, high-end look to streetwear, fusing quality and luxury to create stylish pieces. Each piece is designed by Mark with the aim to create a collection that is as close to being 100% sustainable as possible and offering a great quality feel through premium fabrics such as organic cotton. The brand’s debut collection, launching with SS21, encompasses a large range of stylish pieces. Embedded into the SWAY London brand is the Phoenix, a mythical creature that is born from its own ashes, creating a recognisable symbol and iconic looks, which also reflects on how the brand was created; through the ashes of the first national lockdown.

In a recent episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interviewed Mark Winter, Founder of SWAY London about the story of the brand which was thought up and launched during lockdown. Mark decided to put his spare time towards a passion and set out to build his own streetwear brand with a story behind it. Our host Peter Brooker and Mark talked about the meaning behind the phoenix symbol, the challenges of building a business through both the pandemic and Brexit, and why they launched with a pre-order model.

“The brand was created from the Covid-19 pandemic. I know that period will remind people of bad things, but during that first lockdown I was at home dealing with clients, and I found myself just sitting there and thinking. I could sit around and do nothing or pursue something I've always had a big passion for, which is fashion. I've always had a keen eye for fashion, and so I drew up a roadmap of how I saw the brand. Then the brand was born from there, and I modelled it around the kind of streetwear styling which I tend to wear myself. I just picked up a pen and started randomly drawing something, I surprised myself. The idea behind the Phoenix logo was to have something that was unique, something that was a little different. There are obviously a lot of animals out there, but this one is a mythical creature born from its own ashes, and I saw SWAY London as a brand that was born from the ashes of the global pandemic.”

This is a shortened transcribed edit of episode 121 of the MenswearStyle Podcast with Mark Winter, Founder of sway.london. You can listen to the full version below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.

We sit down with Mark Winter who launched streetwear brand SWAY London with Terence Burrows and Pino Grillo during the pandemic to talk about the Phoenix Logo and the founding story.