When a friend stepped into Mark Scholes and Hayley Evans’s home in Bonfim, Porto, they looked around and said, “This place is basically a Far Afield mood board.” They weren’t wrong. Woven baskets from Sri Lanka, Turkish lamps, Portuguese ceramics, a small army of carved faces and painted masks, travel books stacked like bricks. Nothing is staged: just years of collecting. “Every piece has a story,” Hayley says. “Fifteen years’ worth of stories.”
Their story begins in Manchester. Same university, same course, same year, and a single exchange on a trip to New York. “I asked her where to go,” Mark says. “She said something cool, I thought she was cool – and then we never spoke again until Sri Lanka.”
He moved there in 2007. She had arrived a year earlier. Both ended up at the same department store: Hayley as menswear buyer, Mark in e‑commerce. “I hated it,” he says. Weekends were different. “One of the best things about Sri Lanka is the fabric markets,” Hayley says. “Overruns from factories: prints, textures, colours. I’d get dresses made; Mark would get shirts.”
The shirts became an idea. “I was into quite moddy button‑downs,” Mark says. “In 2009 I took a handful back to Manchester at Christmas and showed them to Oi Polloi. They said, ‘What’s the brand name?’ I didn’t have one.” They scraped together about £300, bought six or seven fabrics, printed basic labels, and got to work. Mark posted the lot on his music blog, Best Foot Forward. The following was loyal and orders arrived quickly. “Within two weeks we had fifty or sixty – but I only had one of each shirt,” he says.
It was, as Mark puts it, “cloak and dagger”. Side projects weren’t allowed. “Someone at work even started following me. It felt like a spy novel.” Word reached the top and an ultimatum followed. He chose the brand; and lost his visa. “I found a way to stay,” he says, and leaves it there. Mark’s grandad paid for the first trademark. “We buried him in one of our shirts,” Mark says. “It felt right – he helped get us started.” Hayley’s contacts facilitated the brand’s growth. They moved from tailors to factories whose owners were willing to bend minimums and extend trust. Ajita in Colombo became a steady guide, a father figure. “He saw the potential and gave us a chance,” Mark says.
Those years were romantic and ramshackle in equal measure. By day they ferried rolls of fabric across Colombo on a little pedal‑start motorbike that needed a running start at red lights; by night their apartment turned into a pocket‑sized studio. They converted the pantry into a sewing room and brought in Senna, an old tailor with steady hands, to help with prototypes while orders stacked up next to the TV. When they needed a plain backdrop for product shots, they used the shower – “the only white wall,” Mark laughs, with Hayley photographing from a chair and Mark modelling under a leaky showerhead. They also saw the arrival of Stevie, the street dog Hayley rescued from a gutter outside their office, who has travelled with them ever since. “I told Mark I’d find her a home,” Hayley smiles. “I knew she was mine.”
What has endured is the way they work. “We’ve never used third‑party agents,” Hayley says. “We know the owners of every factory we work with. When things go wrong, and they do, we talk it through and fix it together.” Ishan, who once supplied their buttons, now runs point for them in Sri Lanka. “My work husband,” Hayley jokes. “Mark’s less helpful.” The relationships are real. Much of the business happens on WhatsApp; problems are met with phone calls, not paperwork. The brand has grown, but the focus on close relationships remains. Mark is Creative Director; Hayley leads sourcing; Mark’s brother, Chris, runs sales; and Chris’s husband, Anthony, oversees operations. “It’s an interesting dynamic working with your husband, and your two brothers‑in‑law,” Hayley says. “We very rarely argue these days.” Mark grins: “Pillow talk is production schedules. We put rules in place for family dinners, but three minutes in, we’re back on Far Afield.”
In 2015 they married in Sri Lanka. “The wedding marked the end of that chapter,” Hayley says. They moved to Istanbul, sight unseen, and stayed three years. There they met Deniz, who helped establish knitwear as a pillar of the brand. Each place has added a layer: Sri Lanka and South India for shirts and cottons; Turkey for knitwear; Portugal for jersey and socks. “You learn to play countries to their strengths,” Hayley says. “It’s better for the clothes and better for the people making them.”
By 2019 they wanted to be closer to home without going home. Porto was a hunch that became a plan. “We never planned to buy,” Hayley says. “We’d been nomadic, reluctant to settle.” Mark smiles: “But the house was beautiful – and the mortgage was cheaper than rent.” They bought it the day after they saw it. The renovation was sizeable for two people who “hadn’t so much as changed a lightbulb”. “We vastly underestimated the work,” Hayley says. “Living through it takes a toll – mentally, physically, financially. But it was worth it.”
Bonfim suited them. “We were adamant we wanted this area,” Hayley says. “I loved the tree‑lined, cobbled streets.” The neighbourhood is quietly creative. “A few of our illustrators and graphic designers live nearby,” Mark says. “They just pop in.” The house filled itself: colonial furniture from Colombo, rugs from Istanbul, large canvases painted by Hayley’s father, posters and postcards layered over time. “We’ve never done the one‑room‑at‑a‑time thing,” Hayley says. “Nothing matches, but everything belongs.” Music runs through it too. Mark’s extensive record collection lives in a walnut‑clad room they call the Disco Den: sleeves on the table, a turntable that always seems mid‑side – a thread that started with Best Foot Forward and never really stopped.
Colour and pattern run through the rooms: the same instincts that show up in Far Afield collections. “Far Afield as a name felt right because we were always a long way from home,” Mark says. “It’s about distance, travel, and the people you meet along the way.” They’ve found a home now, but the travel, and the people they’ve met, still shape everything you see behind the tiled façade of this Bonfim townhouse. As their friend observed: this is a Far Afield house.
Photos by Charlie Gardiner
