Duchamp is a great British success story. Celebrating its 23rd anniversary in 2012, the company traces its origins to France and the chance discovery by the founder of a cache of 10,000 vintage cufflinks in a Paris flea market back in 1989.

This led two years later to the launch of a London-based luxury goods business concentrating on men’s accessories. Appropriately enough, the founder was reading a book about Dadaism at the time, and decided to name the new company after the French surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp.

The early collections were rapidly snapped up by the likes of Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols and three years later Duchamp launched its silk tie collection. This was rapidly followed by the woven silk eveningwear collection. By 1998 Duchamp had opened its first stand-alone store in Ledbury Road in London’s Notting Hill, heralding the next phase of the company’s expansion. To help in this, in 2001 the founder approached Marc Psarolis, then working for Mulberry, to join Duchamp as Sales Director. “By January 2002 I was in Florence at Pitti Uomo selling the first Duchamp shirt collection and we were ready to turn Duchamp into Britain’s leading men’s accessory brand,” says Psarolis.

Despite the name, the ‘Britishness’ of the brand was a given from the word go and continues to be one of Duchamp’s greatest strengths. The same craftsman in Birmingham has produced the cufflinks since the company was founded, while all of the ties are handmade in England. The fabric is woven in England by a Suffolk based company that dates back to the early 1700s and is one of the oldest still designing and weaving silk in the UK. The next few years saw the company grow further and expand its range, until in 2006 the founder decided he wanted to pursue other interests and Marc Psarolis put together an MBO to become CEO of Duchamp. The brand was now ready to be taken to the next level. At the same time, his wife Alison joined the company as Design Director and Duchamp opened its flagship store on London’s Regent Street, which was awarded the “Best Small Store Design” at the Retail Interior awards the following year. Designers Four IV who created the store concept were well known to Psarolis since his days at Mulberry, also create stores for Harvey Nichols worldwide from Edinburgh to Ankara.

Now there are four stores in London - Westfield White City, our pop-up store on Regent St, Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge and a boutique store on Jermyn Street. Duchamp is also carried in the world’s most prestigious department stores, including Barneys and Bloomingdales in the USA, Holt Renfrew in Canada and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong.

Although Duchamp now offers everything from trench coats to trousers, the core of the collection is very much occasion wear for men who love dressing up, with velvet tuxedos and evening dress shirts for events from big nights out to a day at the races. The brand has proved to be a huge hit with the wedding market...after all Duchamp is all about the feel-good factor, and what could be more important than feeling good on your biggest day?