About

Workers' Playtime is a brand - of sorts. At the moment we're focussing on making products that we think are aesthetically and ethically pretty cool.

We're from the United Kingdom - diverse and vibrant, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, its major cities hubs for fashion and culture. Always alive and ever changing, it has developed through the efforts of the good and the great (many from privilege) but mostly through the lives and labour of ordinary working people from around the world. Its history is incredible, brutal and fascinating in equal measure but its strength and appeal is still the huge spectrum of cultures, communities and ideas that live and work here.

We support the continued struggle for improvements in key issues that exist today such as fair pay, the welfare state, individual liberties, freedom of expression, equal rights, the abolition of slavery (and one of its most accepted modern forms - sweatshop labour), the abolition of physical punishment and the consideration of animals as living, thinking creatures with feelings just like us. Unfortunately none of that is anything new - Jeremy Bentham, one of the UK's most influential reformers supported ALL of the same things and that was 250 years ago! Clearly progress has been slow... 

Everything that is used or bought has an effect - on people, animals and the environment - on where it has come from, what it is made from, who has made it. Being selective about what you buy not only gives you very real control on a day-to-day basis about what you support and on what you have an impact, it also shows companies, governments and one another what you consider to be important. A form of collective struggle through individual choice. There may be very few products that are perfect, but positive change comes about from starting to go in the right direction. According to Ian Dury 'every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty', and we agree as long as it does so through your own eyes and makes you feel good wearing it. What you wear can say so much about who you are.


We may have to work, but we don't want to lose sight of the other things in life: music, games, books, films, art and fashion - all critical for individual expression and well-being, and can be instruments for change too. As such, Workers Playtime is a project to facilitate considered, positive living. We believe everyone has to take responsibility for their choices and actions, but there's no reason fun, aesthetics and ethics can't be combined for individual fulfillment and for social change - as Emma Goldman nearly said, 'if I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution'.