Hare was born into a creative family - his father was an architect and his mother an interior designer -and he got into fashion at a young age. After grad­uating from Northumbria University in Newcastle, he landed a job at Nigel Cabourn, a respected menswear label based in the city. Hare quickly worked his way up to be the brand's head of design. Cabourn's approach to design was metic­ulous and it formalised the way in which Hare looked at menswear. "Nigel was fanatical about British manufacturing," he says. "And also about sourcing and then studying vintage pieces. I became a bit of a vintage nut and Nigel's way of working made sense to me."

Four years into his stint at Cabourn, Hare started to feel as though he needed a change. "Nigel was a purist," he says. "He wanted to meticulously recreate old stuff. I wanted to use everything I'd learned to design new pieces." So Hare jumped ship and freelanced for brands such as Burberry and Margaret Howell while he worked on the first few pieces under his name. At the same time his wife Gemma, who's now Hare's partner in Kestin, fell pregnant with their first daughter. "We are both Scottish and had been pining for home for a while," says Hare. "We decided to move back and see if we could make Kestin work." The couple packed up and drove north to Edinburgh just a few days before their daughter was born. This return kick-started Hare working on his brand in earnest.

.Skip forward to today and Kestin has carved out a cult following for its respon­sibly produced and technically impressive menswear. "I like to get down and dirty in factories," says Hare. "I like to be able to see things up close and try to push facto­ries to get the best from them."

He adds that it is this hands-on working mode that keeps him motivated and continues to add to the story of the brand. "We make all our knitwear in [ the Scottish town of] Annan, Dumfries, for example. When we launched Kestin it felt like the natural thing to do because I'd used these work­shops for Nigel Cabourn and Margaret Howell's knitwear," he says. "We choose British makers because we want to sup­port local skills and jobs - but it's always happened organically."When asked about Kestin's sus­tainability credentials, Hare acknowl­edges that, while not perfect, the brand is making steady progress. "There's so much misunderstanding about sustain­ability," he says, "It's more about respon­sibility and making sure that you're doing everything in the best way you possibly can. We take care to make locally and use small production runs but we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves either; all we're trying to do is just take little steps."  

This focus on responsible produc­tion is one of Kestin's strongest values, so much so that it has seen the brand safely through the persistent and con­tinuing lockdowns of the past 14 months. As it turned out, Hare and his team were able to create a new "Made in Scotland" accessories and small leather goods col­lection featuring products made entirely within 50 miles of Edinburgh.

Today, Kestin's team is 10-strong and operates from an airy studio in the centre of the Scottish capital. Despite the disrup­tion of the past year, Hare is optimistic about the brand's future and pleased with how he and his team have shaped Kestin in the past decade. "To be an independent business today, you have to have a great narrative," he says. "Not only that, you've got to undertake thorough research, have experience and understand your own identity. That's when you start creating something with longevity that stands out from the other things around you."