The Story Behind Pauzewear
The Story Behind Pauzewear
Pauzewear started in Tunbridge Wells in the South East of the UK, built by Gav Pauze, the person behind Pauzeradio. It didn’t come from a business plan or a trend report. It came from years spent around music, radio and independent culture, and from wanting to make something physical that reflected that world.
Pauzeradio itself began back in 2009 and was always more than a place to post music. It grew slowly, driven by taste, instinct and independence rather than clicks or hype. Over time it became a long-running platform with its own identity, shaped by lived experience instead of outside pressure.
Gav’s route into radio followed a serious head injury in 2004, when music became part of his recovery. What started as something personal eventually turned into Pauzeradio, which he ran independently for years. The site remains online today, while his day-to-day creative focus has shifted towards building Pauzewear.
Pauzeradio was always intended as an archive for roots reggae and dub — a focused space built around those genres and that culture. Pauzewear, on the other hand, has given Gav room to stretch creatively without those boundaries. It’s a space where ideas aren’t tied to genre or format, allowing a broader expression of identity, design and culture that wouldn’t always fit within the structure of a specialist music platform.
That shift didn’t feel like closing one chapter and opening another. It felt more like the same ideas moving into a different space. Pauzewear carries the same foundations — independence, identity and creative control — just expressed through clothing instead of sound.
There’s no interest here in chasing fashion cycles or seasonal drops for the sake of it. Designs are approached slowly and deliberately, with the idea that they should still make sense a few years down the line. Music and culture sit quietly in the background, influencing the work without needing to be spelled out.
The way the brand operates reflects that mindset too. Pauzewear is run hands-on. Designs are created in Tunbridge Wells and printed by trusted UK suppliers, with creative work handled by Gav or in collaboration with the same local designer who created the original Pauzeradio logo back in 2009. Orders are packed manually and dealt with directly, keeping everything close and manageable.
That level of involvement matters. It means ideas don’t get diluted along the way, and decisions aren’t rushed just to meet demand. Pauzewear isn’t built for fast growth or mass output. It’s built to stay consistent and controlled.
The people who support the brand are treated as part of it, not as numbers. Pauzewear doesn’t lean on influencer marketing or automated systems. One of its more personal touches involves turning customer review photos into custom cartoon characters — a small thing, but one that reflects how much The Collective matters.
That approach will feel familiar to anyone who’s followed Pauzeradio over the years. It’s the same way of working, just applied somewhere else. Build slowly. Stay independent. Keep it human.
Pauzewear is still growing, and it’s doing so deliberately. There’s no rush to scale or to be everywhere at once. The focus is on keeping creative decisions close, maintaining quality, and letting the brand develop naturally.
At the end of it all, the story behind Pauzewear is simple. It’s the same mindset that shaped Pauzeradio, finding a new outlet. Different medium, same roots.
You can checkout the brand at pauzewear.co.uk.
