Founded in 2023, Brunels sources, documents and sells significant tour, promotional and independently produced pieces, with a particular focus on music clothing from the 1980s and 1990s. The archive records both pieces currently held by Brunels and those that have previously passed through the collection.

Our aim is to source directly from original owners, rather than continually recycling pieces already circulating within the market. This has meant finding pieces through former staff and crew, record shops, people who attended the original shows and industry employees. The reason is simple: the story behind a piece can be just as important as the t-shirt itself. Sourcing from the people who were actually there can establish where a piece came from, how it was originally obtained and the context in which it existed - information that a tag or print alone can never provide. As these pieces become more valuable and reproductions become harder to distinguish, provenance is becoming a necessity rather than a bonus. Knowing where a piece came from, who owned it and how it was originally obtained can often tell you more than the garment alone. Wherever possible, we preserve that history through original owners, photographs and other contemporary material before it is lost as pieces change hands. merchandise was rarely produced with the expectation that it would still be collected decades later. These pieces were sold at shows, ordered through record labels, given to staff and crew, used for promotion or produced independently around the scenes they came from. Most were simply bought to be worn.