Inside FORTY, the cool Glasgow brand rooted in 1990s rave culture

He wanted to be a DJ “from the get-go”, enchanted by the community that had built around club culture and the prospect of watching people enjoying the music he was playing, the music that he loved. “Club culture here became very important because it started to represent who you were and how you defined yourself.”

Storytelling is crucial to FORTY as a brand. (Image: Gordon Terris)

Shifts in the industry paved the way for Miller to go out on his own. (Image: Gordon Terris)

The name FORTY was a reference to Miller’s age and the self-realisation that it brought with it (Image: Gordon Terris)

“I was brought up with not an awful lot,” he adds. Seeing people dressed up to go on nights out or to the football, he would eye the pricey pieces they were wearing with quiet interest. “Clothing was not just clothing for me, it was armour.”

He grew up just outside of Lanarkshire and began working in retail in Glasgow at age 16. By the late nineties, he was working at the designer boutique Cruise. “I absolutely adored that place because it was about culture, community, sharing the love of products,” Miller says.

He had always been fascinated with the symbiosis between youth and music culture, whether it was punk, rock and roll, or rave, and how that influence is communicated by the way people dress. Cruise brought designer clothing to Scotland in the early eighties, but when it was eventually sold in the early 2000s, Miller says the firm was “not really about culture and community anymore”.

Shifts in the industry paved the way for Miller to go out on his own. As the story goes, Miller came home later than usual after a shift at Cruise and his then three-year-old son Bryce was in bed. Miller eyed a piece of discarded paper on the floor next to the sleeping toddler. It was a doodle of a monster that would become the FORTY logo and an integral part of the cult brand’s lasting success.

“Music is a massive part of who we are,” Miller says. (Image: Gordon Terris)

“People want to feel part of something,” Miller says. (Image: Gordon Terris)

Harry Miller of Forty clothing in Bridgeton. (Image: Gordon Terris)

FORTY now has three Glasgow stores (Image: Gordon Terris)

The FORTY Clothing team inside the Bridgeton head office. (Image: Gordon Terris)

At the time, Miller couldn’t believe that a three-year-old had drawn the strange little face – it was so precise, underbite and all. “It made me feel lightheaded,” he recalls. “It just stopped me dead in my tracks.”

He shared it on Facebook. A friend (and now designer at FORTY) commented that the monster “would make a great T-shirt”. It was a “light-bulb moment” for Miller, but he decided to sit on it for a while before reaching out to co-founder Peter Love, a self-taught graphic artist.

When he finally did, Love was keen, and they got to work. They put together a handful of designs to accompany “The Bryce” monster logo. One of which, “The Benjamin”, is a camo version named after Miller’s father who served in World War II.

“The vulgar part of what we do is sell clothing, but that’s not what we do,” Miller says. (Image: Gordon Terris)

They called the brand FORTY. The name was a reference to Miller’s age and the self-realisation that it brought with it, a natural sense of confidence. “When I turned 40, I felt a change within myself about making my own decisions,” he says. “It’s like, you’re always asking your peers about what they think. We always look towards other people for validation. But getting a wee bit older, the validation has become less important.

“It’s about actually listening to what people say and what they like and don’t like. It’s about getting rid of ego and still being able to show your own personality. Realistically, without people, we have nothing. That is the whole crux of our community.”

At the end of 2014, Miller and Love staged a pop-up shop inside a café on Cochrane Street with friend and fellow Glasgow DJ Craig Moog playing tunes for the crowd of people that had come out to support them. Miller and Love sold nearly all of their stock. It was the boost they needed – so they took the plunge.

The pair rented a “building site” basement under a hair salon on South Frederick Street and got to work. In place of regular lighting, they had disco lights, and there were no fitting rooms. They used borrowed pallets and clothing rails to furnish the space. Broken basement windows meant Miller had to pile on layers of clothing to survive each frigid shift.

“We started with no expectations, we still don’t have any expectations,” he says. It took four months of hard graft before the team started to realise this could work. For Miller, that is all down to the way the collective behind the brand sees each interaction with shoppers as deeply personal.

“People want to feel part of something,” he says. “The way things are just now, it’s a non-generational thing, I think people are really looking for a sense of community, but from an honest perspective.”

FORTY now has three Glasgow stores. For someone who has had such success, Miller is humble and appreciative, balancing a well-earned sense of pride for building a successful brand with constant references to the importance of leaving ego at the door. FORTY is deeply personal to him, but he credits the brand’s success to the collective behind it.

“I can only speak from a Glaswegian perspective, but Glaswegians can smell bullsh*t fifty paces with the lights off and a bag over their head,” he says. “That’s about being honest, open, and very transparent about loads of different things.”

That’s why storytelling is crucial to FORTY as a brand. Everything the team puts out must have a purpose to it. “It’s storytelling through garments,” he says.

When asked about music, which was always a part of the brand’s identity, Miller’s tone takes on a sense of weight. “Music is a massive part of who we are,” he adds.

This relationship inspired DEFACE, which Miller describes as its own brand under the FORTY umbrella. Inspired by the inclusivity and self-expression of 90s rave culture, the new year will see it developed further.

“The vulgar part of what we do is sell clothing, but that’s not what we do,” Miller says. And seeing the community he has built around FORTY, he is right.

Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am each morning, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it’s free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1