We love to drive. Our happy place is in the driver’s seat with the windows down, three pedals beneath our feet, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift, the furious roar of the engine harmonizing with the throaty melody of the exhaust, eyes focused on the road ahead, and the entire rest of the outside world becoming a peaceful blur of azure skies and verdant hills. We make a run for donuts on Sunday morning last forty minutes because we take the long way. We’re endlessly mapping out all the country roads around us in the quest for the perfect course. We find immense pleasure in both a simple drive to pick up the kiddo from school and a hyper-focused day on the track.
We started this company to create shirts we wanted to wear—shirts that expressed our love of driving in a tasteful, timeless fashion, produced with the highest quality materials and methods.
We tried to find these shirts out in the world, but more often than not found quite the opposite—novelty designs printed on cheap shirts sourced from sweatshops, printed on-demand with glorified inkjet printers or with thermal transfer prints. These were disposable shirts, and we wanted a shirt that would become our favorite and last through years of constant use.
So, over the course of a year we began formulating the idea in our heads, then spent months coming up with a few good designs, a name (perhaps the hardest part!), and pulling together all the necessary components. We sourced our shirts from American Apparel—manufactured to the highest spec and made entirely sweatshop-free in the USA—and had them silk-screened by skilled craftsmen with expertise in the use of the finest water-based inks and printing techniques. We had the itchy fabric tags removed from the collar and a screen-printed tag used in its place. And, lastly, we put an embroidered fabric hem tag on each shirt as a seal of quality. And we stand by that quality.
Today we launch this company knowing we’ve accomplished our first goal of creating the shirts we wanted to wear. Now, with our hopes high and our eyes on the next bend in the road ahead, we share it with the world and find out if others share our enthusiasm. Our fingers are crossed, and with even the smallest amount of success, we’ve got a bunch more ideas we can make into reality. Thanks for being here with us at the beginning, and thank you in advance for any support you lend, whether it be through purchases, invaluable shares on social media, or both. We truly appreciate it.
We’d also love to hear any feedback on what we’ve done so far, or suggestions on what you’d like to see in the future; send them to help@heelandtoeapparel.com.
We thought it only fitting to close this post out with one of our favorite driving videos: The legend Ayrton Senna heel-and-toeing the crap out of a Honda NSX around Japan's Suzuka circuit at a press junket while wearing Italian loafers just like any other Sunday morning. If you haven't seen the award winning documentary about him (trailer), we highly recommend it—you can watch in HD for $3 via Amazon Video.