Becky Okell & Huw Thomas
Made for the life they want.
Becky Okell and Huw Thomas built Paynter around a shared idea of enough: a small company, carefully made jackets, and time to care about what comes next.
The first date lasted three days. Becky Okell and Huw Thomas had met at a London workshop in 2018, and after a fortnight of messages while she was away surfing, he joined her in North Wales. By the second day, they were discussing the brands they admired and what they would make differently. A relationship and a business began taking shape in the same conversation.
Thomas had been collecting workwear and experimenting with jackets made from denim scraps at Hiut Denim. One vintage blue jacket became their starting point. Okell’s account of Paynter’s beginnings includes a retired pattern cutter, a hurried trade-show trip to Paris and a Portuguese factory owner willing to work with an unproven pair. They sold belongings on eBay to help pay for samples and travel. The first run would comprise just 300 jackets.
Home and work initially occupied much the same space. In a December 2020 interview with Bedfolk, the couple described photographing products and shipping orders from their rented London flat. Closing the door of the room they used as an office helped mark the end of a day; a walk along the canal helped when an idea needed untangling. Their preferred surroundings were light-filled, quiet and crowded with books.
The objects they treasured were personal rather than necessarily expensive: a rescued table, an artwork, an Oyster card signed by Paul Smith. Thomas was learning film photography, taking weekend walks to practice among London’s buildings. Those details from 2020 help explain a business devoted to things people might want to keep. Attention was already being paid to how an object acquired a place in a life.
By April 2021, Okell was also describing an informal running club with her brother and his girlfriend: laps followed by coffee, and an effort strenuous enough to interrupt thoughts about work. She identified herself as the doer and Thomas as the dreamer. Her book choice was Susan Cain’s Quiet; his was Let My People Go Surfing. The portrait was of two people looking for a satisfying way to work together, with some space beyond it.
Paynter’s rhythm is deliberately limited. Its current company account describes four jacket releases a year, designed in East London and made to order by a family-run factory in northern Portugal. Every jacket is numbered in the order sold. In a 2022 Challenger Project interview, the founders explained how weekly updates bring customers into the roughly eight-week making process. Waiting becomes part of understanding the purchase.
The model creates its own pressure. Speaking to Genevieve Sweeney in January 2025, Okell said the business was still a team of two. Launches and deliveries created peaks of work that could spill into weekends. Between them were design, testing and conversations with customers. Slow production did not mean an empty calendar. It meant concentrating their effort on fewer garments.
Okell was equally clear about the ambition behind that scale. They wanted a company they enjoyed working in and did not want to sell. A partner seeking outside investment, layers of management and a worldwide store network would have wanted a different life. Having no investors, she said in that 2025 interview, also let them postpone a launch when another sample was needed. The financial freedom they valued was the freedom to wait.
Their impact can be measured in specific sums even without a published annual revenue figure. Paynter’s archive records a May 2020 run of 197 blue jackets priced at £175, which raised £10,000 for the British Red Cross coronavirus appeal. It was one small release with a defined purpose, rather than a claim that buying clothes could solve fashion’s entire waste problem.
In 2026, the couple brought a new personal connection to giving. Working with nearby Allday Goods, they turned discarded milk-bottle plastic into handles for 20 butter knives. The project grew from gratitude for the care their family had received at Homerton Hospital. Paynter says a customer raffle raised £17,890; matching it brought the total to £35,780 for Bliss and Homerton’s neonatal fundraiser.
They also explained what the match cost: other plans for the year had been reduced to make room for it. That is a revealing decision for a small company. The couple’s shared idea of a good business includes choosing where the money goes, how much to make, and which commitments deserve the time that remains.