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ABOUT US

DESIGNED NOT DESIGNER - A RESPONSIBLE BRAND

Irregular Sleep Pattern is an independent brand of bedding and sleepwear (+ associated products), designed at the intersection of art + utility in Glasgow, Scotland. 

Launched in 2020 by wife & husband team Jolene Crawford and Mil Stricevic, we dreamed up our irregular business because we couldn't find bedding & sleepwear which matched the combination of bold aesthetics + attention to detail that we enjoy in the way we dress both ourselves and our home. 

We both love having fun with our personal style, but don't love the fashion business, in particular the cyclical nature which causes so much waste. Excellent in any season, ISP prints are designed by Mil and will be refreshed when we feel like it, rather than dictated by the whims of the established fashion calendar. 

Jolene + Mil, a brief history... 

Mil played bass in bands for ten years before studying product design at Glasgow School of Art / the Royal College of Art in London. He has worked for corporate clients in the world of fashion, food & drink and retail as well as non-profit organisations, cultural institutions and government agencies. His work has been worn on the feet of Italian footballers, drunk in bars, featured as a question on BBC's University Challenge and spent time in prison... what ties them together is a common approach, which perhaps is best described as milish. Alongside his design practice, Mil holds a lecturing post in the department of Product Design at Glasgow School of Art.

Jolene (so named due to a Shetland family where county music is King) is a former arts TV producer with a career highlight of being reprimanded by Dame Joan Collins from half a metre. She has played in folk + pop bands from the age of 13, had a demo deal with Polydor Records, co-founded a modern version of the WI in Glasgow, campaigns for drug law reform, and generally good at 'making things happen'. 

Our Design Ethos   

For ISP, Mil designs both the shape of our garments, and the bold graphic prints. Inspiration for our garment construction comes in part from the Japanese brands Mil loves for the quality of their construction, and from traditional workwear shapes. When designing the print collections, Mil finds endless inspiration from the word ‘irregular’ which is so central to our brand. From an ‘irregular’ take on a traditional sleepwear motif - stripes, paisley pattern - to an ‘irregular’ conceptual starting point - lets use massive bedbugs! - the overall aesthetic is unified by a maximalist approach to pattern scale and colour.

Ideas are explored in an analogue fashion using pen / paint / paper / scissors before transferring to digital, where the repeat patterns are developed for application in either screen or digital printing. (You can hear Mil talking about his design process for our current collection here). Our brand name IS our USP, and has been the guiding light in every design decision - it is Irregular? 

As a product designer and academic there are a few books that Mil has found useful in thinking about the role and responsibility of the designer: Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro, Design as an Attitude by Alice Rawsthorn, and the seminal Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek. This acknowledgment that designers have a responsibility to leave the world in a better place than they found it, to think with an ethical conscience about the nature of their work, is balanced by a deep passion for good design in all forms, utter respect for great craftsmanship and ongoing challenge to understand the mystery of colour combinations that somehow make your heart sing. Its a work in progress. 
The ambition for Irregular Sleep Pattern is to make joyous, fabulous and durable products in a responsible manner. We use organic cotton (which we recognise is not a wonder fabric, but does have a much lighter footprint on the planet than regular cotton). Our quilted products use recycled polyester. Our core collection is screen printed + manufactured in a SMETA regulated family business in India.  Our sleepwear is cut to minimise waste, but the very small scraps produced are sent to a nearby NGO where refugee artisans repurpose them into small goods. Some of our small goods (tea towels, washbags + woollen hot water bottles) are made in the UK. We are in the process of extending our homeware range, but we have learned that good things take time! 

 

Our Irregular Journey 

Since we launched our irregular business, our bold + colourful products have led to so many great experiences. As well as making new friends around the world, our pyjamas have appeared in adverts, been worn on stage by various musicians, become the outfit of choice for comedian / activist Joe Lycett (who we also created two custom suits for), have dressed the staff of Edinburgh Art Festival during its 20th year, have appeared in a book about global fashion collections and much more...

 

When we were conceiving the brand, we knew we wanted it to be as much about community as selling things, and building our irregular community has been a pure delight. As well as using our friends as models, which doubles as a celebration of the creative scene in Scotland, in our quarterly journal posts entitled Nutrient we share cultural and other things we have been enjoying, while our instagram feed is full of silly colourful joy - silly is an essential ingredient in life...