A golfer in a yellow vest walking a par three tee walled in blooming gorse.

The story

Why gorse.

The plant

It flowers all year.

Gorse is the thorny coastal shrub that walls the great links, the blaze of yellow you skirt off the tee from Ayrshire to the west of Ireland. It takes the ground nothing else wants, sand and salt and wind, and it blooms in every month of the year. The old saying on those coasts goes: when gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season.

A brand named for it has one standard to hold. Clothing that is always in season, good in any weather, and worn for years, never just the one.

The plant has been part of the game longer than the brands have. When the Encyclopaedia Britannica set down what made a proper links in 1879, it asked for sandy soil, crisp turf, bunkers, and a fair supply of gorse.

The opening of the 1879 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on golf, ending on the line that a links should be provided with a fair supply of gorse or whin.
“Provided, in addition, with a fair supply of gorse or whin.” · Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1879

The places

Walked, not imagined.

Every photograph we use was shot on real rounds, on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, with family, in ordinary weather. Nothing staged, nothing borrowed.

A player teeing off from a clifftop on the Ayrshire coast, Ailsa Craig rising from the sea beyond.
Ayrshire coast · Ailsa Craig offshore
A links fairway in County Down with gorse in bloom and the Mourne Mountains behind.
County Down · gorse in bloom

The names

Named for the old clubs.

The Niblick and The Brassie carry the names of the wooden-shafted clubs of the game’s first century. The 94 nods to another corner of the game’s story. The rest keep it plain.

A deep racing-green bird's-eye piqué polo with a cream-tipped collar and a small gold gorse emblem at the chest, laid flat on cream linen.

Bird's-eye piqué polo

The Niblick

The dotted knit echoes the dot-punched face of the old wedge it takes its name from. Long-staple cotton, a collar built to stand, made for the warm round.

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A solid raw brass ball marker struck with the gorse mark, resting on green felt beside an embossed leather sleeve.

Solid brass ball marker

The Brassie

A coin cut from solid brass, left raw to darken in your pocket. It ages the way a good club does, no two the same. Your mark one side, your number the other.

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A sepia calotype from the 1840s of golfers at St Andrews holding long-nose clubs, with handwritten name annotations.
St Andrews men and their long-nose clubs · calotype, 1840s

In the frame

Hill and Adamson made this calotype at St Andrews in the 1840s. The handwritten names include Allan Robertson and a young Tom Morris, long-nose clubs in hand. The niblicks and brassies their generation carried are the clubs our named pieces remember.

A golfer teeing off from a clifftop over a bright cove.
My dad, over the cove

From the founder

I walked these courses on trips with my dad. The golf was the reason we went, but what stayed was the ground itself, and the gorse lining the fairways, in bloom whatever month we came.

Back home I kept looking for clothing that felt like those places, quiet and well made and meant to keep, and kept not finding it. So I am making it. The first run is small, numbered, and built to be worn for years.

Chandler

Founder, Gorse

The first run is capped at five hundred.

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