Leeds clothing company Common Sense teams up with artists for new t-shirt collaboration

Leeds clothing brand Common Sense has unveiled a new collaboration, working with local artists and creatives to create their own line of t-shirts featuring their artwork.

Launched during lockdown in 2020, Common Sense is the brainchild of entrepreneur Harry Campbell and his friend and colleague Tom Chadwick.

“It started when we got a load of lining cloth and our friend was a seamstress, so we made a lot of high quality face masks and sold them to bars and restaurants,” Harry explained.

“Me and Tom decided we wanted to make some clothing with our own designs, and make high quality organic clothing and offer that to bars and restaurants. The company has grown on those two principles over the last year or so.”

In a bid to expand their creative horizons, Harry and Tom brought local artists Parker Chapman and Joshua Van Leader on board to design a new range of t-shirts inspired by their own art.

“This project is a real chance for us to open ourselves up to new art and explore new design,” Harry went on to say.

“There’s something really nice about the differences between [Parker and Joshua’s] art, and there’s such a nice feeling you get from seeing beautiful art and wearing beautiful art.”

Parker’s shirts explore his quirky love of cartoons and comical faces, featuring colourful doodles of worms, dogs and other fun-filled creatures.

“I really like comics, comedy comics, just things that are really colourful and happy,” said Parker.

“If I look at something and it makes me happy then that will carry with me into what I then draw, and these shirts are definitely just a bunch of happy little dudes!"

Drawing from a different pool of inspiration, Joshua’s t-shirt designs demonstrate his love of space, with detailed line drawings of astronauts and powerful quotes printed alongside.

“I write and am always inspired by poetry and quotes,” explained Joshua.

“And I also love stargazing and this romanticism of the astronauts, the idea that you can escape from the ordinary.

“When Harry offered me this opportunity I jumped at it; a lot of the line drawings I did already came from fashion illustration so I knew form already in that way for when I did these designs.”

Joshua’s astronaut-inspired t-shirts are now available from Leeds cafe and furniture shop The Collective, and will be released in further stores soon.

A Kickstarter campaign is being launched soon by Common Sense to give people a chance to bag one of the first 50 t-shirts printed with both Parker and Joshua’s new designs, with a signed print included with each purchase.

“Parker’s designs are so different from Joshua’s, and it’s so perfect because art can mean so many different things to different people,” Harry went on to say.

“We didn’t want to pick just one aspect with these shirts, we wanted to do as much as we could.”

For more information about Common Sense Clothing’s new t-shirt range with Parker and Joshua, please visit www.commonsense.group/ or follow @common.sense.group on Instagram.