A few weeks ago I forgot my keys to my new office in Bath. Charlie popped by to let me in, and asked if he could try on an Olive Green Heavy Twill Deck Jacket, as he had his eye on one.

Now it gets weird.

I had just taken delivery of the jacket pictured, 5 minutes before. My first delivery to the office in 2 months. I'd just hung it on my rails. It was his size.

As Charlie put it on, he saw our new 2025 embroidered authenticity label, illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith. See below.

He had the strangest look in his eyes. 

Confused wonder, sadness, joy. I wasn't sure, but I felt the energy change in my little office. It was almost as if I had played a joke on him, but I didn't know how. 

"What's this label all about Nick?"

I said "Oh, we do a new one each year. This is our new one. This is the first jacket I've seen the final embroidery in! It just arrived. You're the first person to ever wear it. Not even I have."

Charlie then showed me the little tattoo of two birds sat on a crescent moon. The similarities to Coralie's design, which I had briefed to her, were uncanny. 

We stopped and stared at each other. "Oh, wow.... Oh wow... Oh wow." I mumbled repeatedly.

Charlie explained that he had lost his mum to cancer 4 years ago. The tattoo was in her memory. They used to say "I love you to the moon and back."

Her death had deeply affected Charlie's mental health. He wrote about his grief here. 

Bearing in mind the label is there to help men talk about their pain, in conjunction with our charity partner CALM, this added yet another layer of intensity.

We both recognised something important had just happened. I'm not religious, but whether this was simply statistical coincidence, or a sign from the universe, IT MATTERED.

I refused to sell him a jacket. I didn't want to turn something special into a transaction. It was my intense pleasure to do that. I almost felt it was my duty. Charlie is donating to CALM instead.

We texted for a while afterwards, as both of us absorbed this moment and it's significance.

This is a story I'll never forgot. How sometimes the little things are big and they matter more than you'd understood a few seconds prior.