Scarlet in chains

Former Ghost: I’m here with Drew and Sophie from Scarlet in Chains. Thanks for taking time to speak with us tonight. I love your stuff. I picked up some of your products at the Alternative Market a couple of weeks ago and already styled it in a shoot, and it’s just it’s brilliant.

Drew: It’s nice to get to talk to you properly because whenever we’re at events, we’re always caught up with customers. We like to make sure we talk to everybody properly because, the brand isn’t just about what we do - It’s about us as well. People getting to know us and because everything’s handmade, it’s nice. I think that’s part of the special thing, right?

FG: I think that’s a big part of why it’s special. I mean, watching you go in the back and put together links and things like that, It just it feels authentic.

Drew: Yeah, it’s really lovely to be able to do it.

FG: It’s brilliant. I know a little about you, but I want to take the time to get more context and colour about where you come from and why you’re doing this and why you’re so passionate about it.

Drew: Where to begin? It’s kind of a mixture of things, to be honest. We got to a point where really, we needed to work for ourselves. Due to some medical issues, we gave up our jobs and started doing a variety of things – film and television, software and game design, and some costuming.

Sophie: Scarlet in Chains came about from one of our website clients. When we were doing the software design, we helped with a catwalk for a latex designer. Well, we’re actually in the catwalk in the end. We were sort of an unplanned addition when some of the models didn’t turn up. We’d been playing about with making chain jewellery for ourselves because I have very, very acidic skin. I destroy most types of metal and I was getting fed up with coating everything in nail varnish. 

At this catwalk, there were a lot of people from the alternative and the fetish community, and we noticed there was a real gap in the market because it was either sort of very, very girly stuff or things that you couldn’t wear day-to-day. It was things that were a little bit too ostentatious for your sort of usual outfits. And we revisited the idea as Drew made me a couple of things. 

And we’re like, how could we do more with this? Because we had to make the tools to do it ourselves because to work with the chain like we do, we’ve actually made mods to tools so we can actually open and close the links.

Drew: Yeah, my granddad was a tool maker, so it was sort of thinking what would my granddad have come up with? And yeah, it was actually getting out of the grinder, and we just made our own tools so we could do it a lot easier.

Sophie: We couldn’t find what we wanted to accessorise models for the shoot, and there was so little choice of alternative jewellery and the body harnesses and especially when it came to different body types and sizes. A lot of the ones that did exist, were very, very limited to who they’d fit.

FG: The quality of the mass-produced kit was shit. I mean, it was just always shit.

Sophie: Yeah. I think what really got us started with it, is the fact that we couldn’t believe somebody else hadn’t already done it. Coming from the home of chain making in the Black Country, we realized we had a unique opportunity to use local suppliers. Our chains still come from down the road in Walsall, which is known as the heart of chain making in England. 

There’s a lot of history that comes with the chain making here. There’s a lady called Mary MacArthur. She hails from about five miles down the road from where we live. There’s a statue of her because she fought for worker’s rights. It was all women chain makers, who got fed up the way they were being treated. It’s because of her and the people around her that we have workers’ rights in this country now. 

Drew: Because they rioted from bad conditions. So that’s one of the reasons why the chain making from our area of the country is so famous, because literally we wouldn’t have minimum wages, our weekends or paid holiday if it wasn’t for those women getting very, very pissed off.

FG: That’s amazing. I did not know that. That’s incredible.

Sophie: We’ll send you some history. They rioted, well, as much as you can do in the big Victorian skirts and that. But they had a very good go and said there’s a real history behind the chain from where we come from. I like to share the history. There’s a fetish event we do in Birmingham and every so often they let us do ‘Traders Talks’. I never thought I’d have held the attention of an entire room at a fetish event giving them a history lesson on Sunday afternoon, but I managed to make it really interesting.

Drew: Yeah. Yeah, it was really nice to see, actually.

FG: That’s fascinating. I love the way it ties you, not only to where you are, because it brings that traditional kind of handcraft into, number one, our culture, right? Because our culture is absolutely not mainstream. Number two, it brings it into the next generation of preserving the art of doing it.

Sophie: Absolutely. We’re really passionate about it when we do the festivals - we always have the Black Country flag flying from our tents along with our logo flag, and normally one of the pride flags as well. The Black Country flag actually has a chain on it in honour of the area. 

Even the weight of chain we use is because of history. Up to about three millimetre chain was often made by women at home at their hearth. They’d have your children asleep in the next room and you’d be there making the chains in the evening.

So even the thicknesses we use are the same ones those women would have been working on back in the day. I’m amazed that nobody before us had thought to bring these sort of cultural elements together because chains have been such a big feature in goth, punk, and footwear the entire time. 

Drew: Yeah. Our area is effectively down the road from a place called Brierley Hill. And there always used to be the saying, and it works a lot better with the more the Black Country accent, rather than saying, “well, I’ll go to hell”, they used to say, “I’ll go to Brierley Hill”. 

Brierley Hill is actually in a valley. To enter it, you are sort of going up and you look down the valley and that’s where all the hearths were and where all the chainmakers would have all their pits. Especially on a cold day, the mist and so on would settle down and the place is covered with the smoke as well and you’d literally just look down at the red heat coming through from the furnaces, and you’d have all the steam and the smoke. It would have literally looked just like the pits of hell. And that phrase sort of came around.

FG: And you still source all the chain locally, all of the steel and everything?

Drew: Yeah. Walsall is where the chain and the main most of the rings come from. But yeah, one of the things we do is to always use UK companies.

Sophie: If it can’t be made in the UK, it’s at least designed in the UK and we work with UK engineering firms that then import for us. But where we can, we try and source within the UK or at least use somebody that has a base in the UK as well. It still goes back to absolutely helping our economy out because it needs it at the moment.

Drew: Like the clasps and so on. We use this company in Bristol that does those and the little padlocks. It’s our own design but sometimes we need to phone them up and just say, could you make a little tweak to the design, which we did with the padlocks because a couple of folks said the corners weren’t as sort of rounded as they’d like. So it was literally a case of ringing them on the phone, “right, next batch, could you round the corners off a bit?”

Sophie: We’ve been really lucky because a lot of engineering companies didn’t want to work with such a small scale operation. But the ones that did, really helped us. They tell us “you guys are our most interesting clients” and we really enjoy working with them. And it helps - our chain maker the other day was having supply issues, but they made sure we got everything because the worry about us. Really good relationships with our suppliers are so important because a lot of them are small family-owned businesses that have been working in the UK for like 50-100 years.

FG: I love this. This really needs to be publicized. This is a great story and it’s a great context on the business. You guys have been around for, what, 8 or 10 years now?

Sophie: Eight years.

Drew: This year. It’s it doesn’t feel like that long. It’s gone crazily fast. Yeah.

FG: Tell me about the Design aspect.

Drew: The micro and mini size chain we use is made just for us. We asked them to make the links a little bit shorter and so on. From the opposite side of the room we can recognize our chain straight away.

Sophie: I know what year I made we made the piece because for the first four years the business we used a standard chain. And then when we started to use over 100 meters a year, they offered to start making our own batch of chain. When that happened, Drew got the verniers out. You start working out what’s the ideal length of a link? What’s the most comfortable length of a link? Because with things like with body harnesses, it was making sure they didn’t trap hairs and things like that.

Drew: Some of ours are restraint strength. Yeah. So it was a case of making sure that if they’re being used for play, it’s not going to actually cause any damage to the body as well. Hence why we’ve got the twists we’ve got in them and so on. It won’t cause any welts or anything. When we first started, we tested a load of different chains, different materials, trying to work out. So that’s why we had to learn all about metallurgy and covalent bonding and God knows what and so on, going into like atomic structures. And we tried a lot of different materials. That’s how we ended up with the chain that we’re now using.

FG: I love the luster of your material.

Sophie: It’s got that nice shine. It’s a true silver and it’s a nice weight to it.

Drew: It’s just lucky that stainless steel has ended up being the perfect one. A lot of people use our jewelry as well as anxiety jewelry. We’ve actually got a range of what we’ve classed as being fiddle jewellery because we’ve had a lot of folks saying, “we use your jewellery just to play with it, find the weight of it comforting and I’ll play with the ring on the front” and so on. Well, if this is what you like and so we’ll do a range for you guys and so on. 

Sophie: We’ve got the freedom to do that because we’re just making everything from raw materials. We haven’t got to always wait for components to be designed. Normally we can make what people want from the components we already use, and every so often we’ll get sort of special ones done like, like the flat links on a Drew’s necklace. We used to use chain links to do sort of one-off links, but obviously they’ve got the twist in them. Sometimes they wouldn’t always sit flat. We literally designed just for the sake of a link, just to try and get it the perfect shape and size and make sure it matched in with the rest of it.

Drew: We set our own crystals - we used to use Swarovski crystals when we first started. Then over the pandemic, Swarovski got rid of wholesale. That forced us to evolve again. And we had problems finding stainless steel crystal holders. You get them in silver all day, every day, but trying to find stainless steel ones took us the best part of a year, I think, to track down. And we’re still quite limited now of what crystal sizes and shapes we can use. Now we’re looking for a factory to make them for us. But we will always set the crystals ourselves.

Sophie: We like doing that when we’ve got a full moon. We’ll sit and do all the crystals and we’ll have some incense on. We often put that on our TikTok and it’s just a nice touch that we do for our witchy and our pagan clients. They really appreciate a little extra touch because a lot of them ask us, “can I have it charged under a new moon or a full moon” or, you know, or whatever they want. It’s like,” yeah, not a problem. We can put it in the window when it’s the correct Moon for you”.

I’ve always moonlight charged all our crystals in the house, so it’s really nice. It’s a nice night that we spend together.

Drew: It’s all little things that people don’t see that we do. Or there’s other things that we do with our work that I don’t think we remember to talk about because we just do it normally anyway.

FG: I continue to be impressed. How thoughtful and deliberate, you are to support the communities. Not only that that you source from, but that you’re manufacturing for. And it’s obviously you’re part of the community and integrated into the beliefs and the “tribal structure” of what we do - because we are a tribe. We’re a chosen family in this community. And, you know, I’ve got friends around the world that I wouldn’t have met without this scene. Our tribe is some of the greatest humans I’ve ever come across.

Drew: Some of the most fascinating people.

Sophie: Because we learn so much from the people around. It’s really nice that we’ve got Leeds and Manchester and that we get to meet up with the other creators regularly as well, because all of us sort of talk and sort of exchange ideas and collaborate. I mean, we’ve done some amazing shoots and items with other creators.

Drew: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.

Sophie: One thing that amazes me is our collars, I’ve had some moments which have really got to me where people have bought a day collar, they have the proper ceremonies and they use our collars for that. 

Drew: Then we’ll see them years later and say they’ve never taken it off. Some of them it’s been five years. I think it was one of them. And it’s like ever since the day I had it, it’s never been off because they can shower and it’s doing it whatever they want with it. And it’s literally they just say, I’ve loved it every day as much as and it looks exactly the same as it did the day I made it. And it’s never been off.

Sophie: Not just that. It’s lovely to be a part of goth fashion. It’s something we’ve both been so passionate about for most of our lives and the fact that our products are often people’s go-to accessory now. I mean, look, they’ll have the New Rocks on or whatever, like, “Oh, but I’ve got my Scarlet in Chains”, and I’m just like, Oh my God. It’s like I never in my wildest dreams thought that our stuff would be part of people’s day-to-day goth outfits. And that, though we’re not as well-known as some other brands, the amount of people that say, “I saw your stuff on somebody at this club or that gig” and that people know our stuff when they see it. 

FG: That’s magical. Thank you so much for tonight. I truly, truly appreciate you and your time, and everything that you do.

Sophie: And also, thank you so much. This has been really lovely.

FG: Yeah, I’m happy to do it. You’re work inspires me and I want more people to know about it. And if I can expand that in any way, then then I’m happy to.

Sophie: That’s wonderful.

Drew: Thank you so much.