STILL INTO IT. NOT SORRY.
Funcle Yeti is for grown-ups who were meant to grow out of the cartoons, the collections and the favourite jacket, and never quite got round to it. It’s run by one of them. Hi.
WHY THIS EXISTS
I’ve spent most of my life trying to find my place in the world. Growing up didn’t settle the question. It just changed what people raised an eyebrow at.
Somewhere along the way, “kidult” became a marketing category. There are whole aisles for us now, and half the internet runs on nerd culture. Yet mention the anime you’re rewatching, or the 4,000-piece brick set that’s taken over the dining table, and you still get the look. You know the one.
I’m neurodivergent, and I’ve always known what a familiar thing can do for a brain like mine: the show you can quote line for line, the game you could play blindfolded. It steadies you. Plenty of people feel the same, neurodivergent or not. Most just won’t say it out loud. Here, you can.
Watching all this, I noticed people use nostalgia in three ways.
Funcle Yeti is for all three, but it’s here to make that last one a lot less rare. So it digs into the objects, shows and shared references that shaped us, less to hide in them than to work out what they’re still good for.
“Being a grown-up means paying your bills on time and still knowing every word of a Cartoon theme song. You don’t have to pick one.”
WHY A JACKET, OF ALL THINGS
THEN
I grew up in Kochi, on India’s south-west coast, where the humidity has never once taken a day off. So naturally, the height of cool was a jacket. Sleeveless ones were all the hype, my cousin had a whole suit, and I begged my parents for one too. (You may notice the Yeti got one in the end.)
After that, the two of us wore those jackets every chance we got, through the 90s and early 2000s, flexing them at any relative who’d stand still long enough. Comfort was not the point.
NOW
So a jacket was never going to be a coincidence. Run One is the grown-up version: a handwoven hemp chore jacket, made to order in Kathmandu, built to be worn hard and mended rather than replaced. It even breathes, which would have been handy back then.
Why hemp? Sustainability was always part of the thinking, and to my mind hemp is about as close to a wonder plant as fabric gets. It’s tough, it softens the more you wear it, and it still gets side-eyed for what its famous cousin gets up to at weekends. Yes, that plant. No, you can’t smoke the jacket.
ON THE RECORD
I’m a sucker for quality, and I care about what I sell, who makes it and who ends up wearing it. So here’s how this actually works, minus the fine print.
MADE
Being decided right now: two makers, sample against sample. The build log shows the comparison, and this box gets the final answer, origin included.
SOLD
By Retrosoul Ventures LLP, my company, registered in India. It’s the name on your invoice and the one responsible if anything goes wrong. Taxes and import charges are ours to pay, not yours.
RUN
Thirteen jackets in the first run. That isn’t a sales tactic; it’s a first run small enough to get right before making more.
REPAIRS
Every jacket comes with its own repair kit, because “built to last” should include the part where you can fix it yourself.
FOUNDER
Me, minus a name and a face, for now. That’s personal comfort, not strategy: the spotlight and I have never really got on. Everything else is on the record, the build log shows the work as it happens, and the inbox is always open at hello@funcleyeti.com.
Run One is my well-stitched middle finger to everyone who laughed when I talked about doing this. Mostly, though, it’s something I care about, and a business I’ve built by myself
I’ve lived as a digital nomad since the world reopened after the pandemic. Funcle Yeti is how I’m trying to make that life pay for itself and, if it works, do right by everyone involved, from the loom to your wardrobe.
— The human behind the Yeti