Peek into the daily life of George Rutherford-Jones, co-founder of Original Fibres and learn about the routine and rituals that keep him feeling his best
Owning one (soon to be two) shops in London is no mean feat and that’s exactly what George does as the co-founder of the UK’s only specialist linen brand Flax London. With a focus on sustainability and creating clothes to be worn all year round, Original Fibres is helping shape the future of menswear.
“A cup of tea (had back in bed) and breakfast gets me out of bed in the morning. At this time of year, it’s normally porridge with yoghurt and honey and all sorts of other things. When I don’t feel like jumping out of bed immediately, I love reading in the mornings – it’s a particularly passionate weekend ritual of mine to get up, make my girlfriend and myself a cup of tea, and get back into bed and read. I see mind and body as being one and the same as being mutually beneficial to each other and something that I’ve done for a long time now is running. Obviously it’s great from a fitness perspective but I probably run more from a mental perspective because it’s the thing that I find switches me off more than anything else , clears my head and has the added benefits of getting the endorphins going. I never go for a run and not return feeling better about life. One of the things that I’ve always done is run without music or podcasts, and I don’t even like taking my phone with me. I just like to go in my T-shirt, shorts and trainers – as liberating as possible – and just be disconnected from the world for that period of time. One of the great things is that the harder I run, which is obviously beneficial for my fitness, the more mindful benefits there are because I have to concentrate on the running and I can't think about whatever’s going on at work and so on.
I spent 6 years in the army (which absolutely loves coffee and tea and spends its life talking about making hot drinks) so I have this daily routine which is tea when I wake up, coffee mid-morning, coffee immediately after lunch and tea in the afternoon – and that’s more or less the routine that I follow every single day and as soon as I finish one hot drink, I look forward to the next one and I cannot understand people who can live life without either of those! A hot shower is one of life’s great pleasures and humankind has worked so hard to make sure that we can have hot water, literally on tap, at any time of day so in my mind, it feels like a backwards step to be stepping into a cold shower and I think our ancestors would be quite furious when they knew all the work that went into having hot water to then just have a cold one. And after my hot shower, I always moisturise.
My dad always used to say to me when I was younger “life isn’t going to come to you, you’ve got to go and get it” and that ties in nicely with my daily routine – jumping out of bed and making it happen for myself. And if I could say one thing to my 16 year old self, it would be to get out of my comfort zone and be prepared to fail.
We have a very exciting 2024 coming up with Original Fibres and are going to be opening up a second store. We recently expanded our collection from selling just linen to linen and wool, so that’s very exciting.”
