The Luxury Editor had the pleasure of interviewing Eddy Downpatrick, founder of Highlands and Islands-inspired menswear brand, FIDIR. Full-time daydreamer and would-be full-time adventurer. Read on to find out more about the man behind the brand.
Tell us more about the lightbulb moment for FIDIR and how you went on to create a successful brand.
Hiking Beinn Deargh above Ullapool in the embers of a summer?s day, I realised I wanted to create products that could in some way express what I felt about that part of the world, the rarefied light, the brooding gloom, all of it. Having brought the initial idea to my now business partner a couple of years ago, FIDIR has evolved into what it is now and is evolving into what it?ll be in years to come.
What does a typical day involve for you" If such a thing exists! Frustration, joy, laughter, a desire to put fist through the wall or lift heavy things… learning more than just one new thing. I don?t function without exercise … everything else (design ideas, remembering to call my mother etc.) falls into place around that.
The designs are inspired by the Scottish Highlands, tell us why you chose this influence for your collections.
Nowhere else in the world makes me quite so misty eyed. Rarefied light… brooding gloom… there?s a lot of the sensorial to be taken from that.

The word Fidir, is associated with feel, experience, explore. Are these characteristics important to you and are they are reflection of on...