“The thing about us is that we were the real thing,” says Barrie Sharpe, one of the founders of Duffer of St George. “We were the first street clothing company to be really from the street. We changed fashion worldwide and the way people looked at it.”

It’s easy to forget just how important Duffer of St. George was (or The "Duffer" of St George, as the logo had it) and how it continues to influence casual menswear. It's blend of English eccentricity and old-school American sportswear helped form a blueprint of men's street fashion which still exists today. It was a noted influence on New York brand Supreme whose founder, James Jebbia, used to import Duffer product to the States. It brought John Smedley back to prominence, with Duffer buying stock that was so old that Smedley had stopped attempting to sell it. It was the first European stockist of Carharttand Red Wing. It imported Adidas trainers so successfully that it led to the launch of the heritage line Adidas Originals. It brought the New Era cap to UK shores, acting as agents for the brand, as well as a stockist.

Duffer’s alumni are a who’s-who of men’s fashion. But when you mention Duffer of St. George now, the question that often pops up is: "Whatever happened to them?"

Starting out in 1984, Duffer of St George originally consisted of Eddie Prendergast, Barrie Sharpe, Marco Cairns and Clifford Bowen. They’d known each other from the club scene (Sharpe was a successful DJ), sharing an interest in vintage clothing. With £60 from Bowen, they bought enough clothing to start a stall in Camden market, selling dead stock from Army and Navy surplus stores.

Duffer of St George founders Barrie Sharpe, Clifford

_{Bowen, Eddie Pendergast and Marco Cairns at their Portobello Road shop}

After less than a year they moved to Portobello Road, Notting Hill, after a rather odd business deal was proposed to them. “There was a woman selling kids' gear and she was fed up with it,” recalls Cairns. “She couldn’t pay her invoice so she said, ‘Do you wanna take the store instead?’”

But their first love remained music. With the Portobello shop occupying them during the day, they also ran club nights. Sharpe had a successful recording career, and was a pioneer of what would come to be known as Rare Groove. He was also in a band, Diana Brown & Barrie K. Sharpe; they released just one album, The Black, The White, The Yellow And The Brown (And Don't Forget The Redman), but their music was influential enough to catch the attention of Prince and Maceo Parker, with whom Sharpe toured.

But the clothes were taking up more and more time. With good quality vintage gear becoming harder to source, they started to move into manufacturing, with limited production runs of their own styles.

They eventually stopped their club nights to focus on Duffer, opening a store on D’Arblay Street, Soho in 1989. Here they caught the attention of Ray Petri, one of the most influential fashion stylists of the 80s. He came into the shop and said: “This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for”. Thanks to Petri and his agency Buffalo, Duffer clothes were soon finding their way into prominent fashion shoots.

Looking for new stock and interesting brands, the group would embark on regular trips to America, buying obscure trainers and importing them back to the UK. They became the first UK importers of Adidas Superstars, Red Wing boots, Schott puffa jackets and New Era baseball caps. Sometimes a white lie was needed to get hold of the stock. “A guy asked us why we were interested in so many sneakers,” says Cairns. “We just said we were a sports club and the kids haven’t got any footwear, so he took pity on us.”

Sharpe, Cairns and Pendergast in 1985

In late 1989, just as Duffer was hitting its stride, Clifford Bowen left the company and then attempted to sue the remaining three founders for projected future earnings. The case lasted for around year, ending with Bowen losing the case and Duffer paying him a fraction of his original demands. But it was the shape of fallouts to come, unsurprising considering some of the big personalities involved.

Sharpe had a reputation as a man who wouldn't shy away from a physical altercation. One incident, which he recalls in a memoir he has written (he is seeking funding to publish the book via crowdsourcing site Kickstarter), involved getting into a fight with a group of professional heavyweight boxers, including Frank Bruno’s sparring partner. It ended with Sharpe hitting him over the head with a rolling pin and fleeing the scene.

Following the move to Notting Hill, Duffer's reputation continued to grow. Yet what appeared to be great British success story didn't translate to huge profits. The founders were obsessed with clothes, but had no business expertise. Everything was learnt on the job. “We had no idea what we were doing," says Sharpe. "We were just having a laugh. And it grew into something we weren’t expecting.”

With growing overheads, 20 members of staff, a design studio and two stores - as well as extravagant trips to Florence to buy £375 loafers - the brand ran into financial problems in 1994, and management agreed to sell a 70% share of the company to Munich based Dr. Thomas Hiedecker. “He was a flash tennis player,” recalls Sharpe, who clashed with Hiedecker. “It became a commercial company and it wasn’t for me.” Sharpe created Sharpeye in that same year, a brand originally conceived as a favour to a company to whom Duffer owed money. Yet with Sharpeye a success and with relations with Hiedecker becoming strained, Sharpe decided it was time he and Duffer parted company. He left the company the following year.

Sharpe’s departure left “a big hole”, according to Cairns. And a backer who wanted to see a return on his investment, they now had to get serious about the company. “The first ten years was just arsing around, really.” Cairns recalls. Now they had to show they could turn a good reputation into profits.

With Hiedecker on board, the company matured and the product grew more commercial. The Duffer name was emblazoned on T-shirts and jackets. In the late 90s, the Duffer hoodie was the brand's biggest seller, at one point accounting for nearly 60 per cent of turnover. It should have been cause for celebration, but Cairns was growing concerned. “It started getting on the wrong people’s backs because there were a lot of copies at market stalls,” he says. At first Duffer's management tried to find out where these copies were coming from, spending thousands on private detectives. They soon gave up, although they did find out that one bootlegger was inside their own factory.

The Duffer hoodie brought them a new level of fame, earning them kudos with the likes of David Beckham and Jamie Oliver. The erstwhile "Naked Chef" became synonymous with Duffer in the first couple of years of his TV career. “[Oliver] was all over it,” says Cairns. “He called up one day when he was still unknown, said he was doing a book and he might be doing a TV show. I said, ‘Yeah, whatever’. We just gave him some gear. And then we went to the launch of his book [in 1999] and realised how serious it was. They’d blown up all these images of him and in every other page he was wearing Duffer.”

The brand had become ubiquitous, so where does a company go from there? In 2001, they opened a tailoring-based store in 2001 on Savile Row. “We did that because it was a laugh and it annoyed people,” says Cairns, suggesting that the founders still weren't taking the business entirely seriously. They had a two year lease on the site, but decided not to renew the contract when rent demands rose.

Arguably, Savile Row but was an error of judgement, but for Cairns the biggest mistake Duffer made was signing a licensing deal with Debenhams, in 2004. “They called it St George by Duffer, which was a mistake. We thought the independent stores would stick with us, but they saw it as we’d sold out.” Then there was the issue of the Debenhams products themselves. “They were pretty shocking," says Cairns. "We tried to police it but there was nothing we could do about it.”

With the loss of independent store support, Duffer were soon in financial troubles again and fell into administration in 2008. This time they were bought out by JD Sports. Marco Cairns was named creative director but Eddie Prendergrast left to launch his Shoreditch menswear store, Present.

Six years on, and 30 years since its launch, Duffer still exists, although it's barely recognisable from the company that existed prior to the 2008 buyout. Many other British brands have more in common with the original Duffer than the label which currently bears the name. One of the brand's modern successes is Duffer Japan, a separate entity licensed by Japanese company Itochu. Duffer were approached by several Japanese companies, including Mitsubishi, in 2006 but chose Itochu because of their work with Paul Smith. They’ve since started a small rollout of Duffer Japan product among several British independent stores, helped by the fact that many of the UK stores they sell to are owned and managed by people who got their start at Duffer. A common occurrence for Marco Cairns is to be sitting in a meeting and hear someone say: “You don’t remember me do you? I used to work for you”.

You can't blame Cairns for not remembering them all, when so much of the menswear landscape has merged into one. As Sharpe says, “After us there were loads of companies like us. But at the time, there was nothing like us.”