SLOAT began with a specific place in mind.

Sloat Boulevard runs west through San Francisco until it reaches the southern edge of Ocean Beach. Along the way, the boulevard passes some of the best golf courses in San Francisco. At its end is a stretch of coastline defined by cold water, heavy fog, strong wind, and conditions that can change completely within a few hours. It is where golf and surfing—two things that have shaped our lives in different ways—exist alongside one another.

These conditions can make San Francisco a surprisingly demanding environment in which to get dressed. A round of golf can begin in dense fog and finish under a clear sky. A morning at Ocean Beach can be cold, wet, and punishing before the rest of the city has properly started its day.

SLOAT also began with a simple idea: golf clothes could be made differently. 

Most modern golf apparel is designed around synthetic fabrics, performance claims, and a version of the game that neither of us found particularly interesting. We wanted clothes made from natural materials, designed with restraint, and capable of handling those changes without looking overtly technical or feeling limited to a single activity. Clothes that would function both on the golf course and away from it, improve with use, and, when made well enough, remain in someone’s life for a very long time. Our belief is that if we can make clothing that works here in San Francisco, it will work in many places beyond our own.

The two of us arrived at SLOAT from different directions.

I (Dan) have spent nearly 20 years working in the human rights and environmental lane of the apparel industry, most recently leading sustainability and philanthropy at one of the world’s largest apparel companies. Teague spent much of his career as a chef and is now an owner of Sons & Daughters and Kiln, both two Michelin-starred restaurants in San Francisco.

Apparel and restaurants are different businesses, but they share certain fundamentals. Both depend on materials, craft, patience, and an almost unreasonable attention to details that most people will never consciously notice. They also require you to work closely with people who are exceptionally good at making things. Those ideas have shaped our approach to SLOAT from the beginning.

We work primarily with GOTS-certified organic cotton, Responsible Wool Standard-certified wool, and Good Cashmere Standard cashmere. We manufacture with factories whose work we respect and whose names we are proud to share. We have no interest in using sustainability as decoration or pretending that making more clothing is itself an environmental act. Our responsibility is to choose materials carefully, make products that justify their existence, and design them to be worn for years rather than replaced after a season.

The first SLOAT collection is our attempt to put those beliefs into physical form. It includes golf clothing, outerwear, knitwear, and everyday pieces made primarily in Portugal, with additional work being developed in Japan and the United States. Some of it is designed specifically for the course. Much of it is intended to move easily between golf, the city, the coast, and wherever the day happens to go.

This journal is part of the same project. It gives us room to talk about the people, places, materials, and practices that surround SLOAT without reducing everything to a reason to buy something. Golf is part of that world, but it is not the entirety of it. So are surfing, food, design, friendship, repetition, failure, and the satisfaction of getting incrementally better at something difficult.

We are at the very beginning. We expect SLOAT to change as we learn, but the central idea should remain the same: make beautiful and useful things, make them with people we admire, and stay faithful to the place that gave us our name.

Thank you for being here at the start.

Dan Fibiger & Teague Moriarty