Northern Muse began the way most honest things do — with a feeling of something missing.

I had spent years in photography, finding meaning in the image, the moment, the truth a single frame could hold. Also an English Literature graduate, words have held the same thing to me that images do - carried weight, held meaning, said more than they appear to. It is probably why that when it came to building a brand, the typography and name was never a detail. It was the whole point. So when I stepped away from that world, I stepped away from something essential in myself — the need to create, to look carefully, to make something that mattered.

I wear, you could say, loose T-shirts, some may say oversized T-shirts. I wear them with jeans, with wide trousers, dressed up and dressed down. They are the most-worn thing in my wardrobe and the thing I could never find done well. Not at the low end, where quality is an afterthought. Not at the high end, where the price reflects a logo rather than a garment.

So I built what I was looking for.

I source the base garment with the same rigour I once brought to choosing a lens — weight, drape, durability, the way it feels at the end of a long day rather than just the beginning of it. Then I print every piece myself. By hand, on my own press, in my studio in northern England. Each one touched by the person who decided this brand needed to exist.

There are four designs. All text. Large enough to stay in the mind. Different enough in their typography that each one says something slightly different — but all of them say the same name. The name means everything to me.

Northern England. A place that does not announce itself. A place with a particular kind of pride — understated, grounded, no need to explain. A muse is something that inspires without trying. Put those two words together and you have the brand I wanted to wear.

Northern Muse is for the woman who has stopped searching for herself in her wardrobe and started building it around who she already is. She dresses without performance. She invests in fewer, better things. She knows the value of something made to last.

She feels like she's home in what she wears.

I make these T-shirts for her. I make them for me.