Graham Withers is a Brooklyn-based menswear company specializing in hand-crafted neckties, bow ties and pocket squares. We source only the finest fabrics and all of our products are manufactured in New York City.

Our Story

Graham Withers co-founders Dave Roma and Paul Hanan met as teenagers through their participation in the New York skateboarding scene. As the years went on, they remained good friends and eventually ended up living in the same Brooklyn apartment together. They were getting older, skateboarding less and looking for a new project to keep them creative.

Paul, Dave and a couple of other friends had the idea to start making t-shirts, so they set out to learn how to screen print. They bought a simple screen and some ink from Pearl Paint and began printing their artwork on t-shirts. Bolstered by positive reactions from friends, they began selling their t-shirts to local skate shops and at various markets in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Business began to grow, so they moved their small operation from their apartment on Graham Avenue and Withers Street in Williamsburg to Paul's dad's whip cream factory on Long Island. "We started selling a lot of t-shirts and realized quickly that we were going to have to buy a screen printing machine. By good fortune, we were introduced to a screen printer who was going out of business and selling one for cheap. Paul’s family owns a whip cream company and they were nice enough to let us store our machine in their warehouse and work there after normal business hours,” Dave explains. The boys began printing their t-shirts immersed in the scent of fine whipped toppings; all was well and good.

Dave Roma (left) and Paul Hanan (right) hang out at the whip cream factory by the forklift, which they may or may not use in the tie making process. Their bond of friendship made certain by their matching Clarks desert boots, passion for skateboardi… — Dave Roma (left) and Paul Hanan (right) hang out at the whip cream factory by the forklift, which they may or may not use in the tie making process. Their bond of friendship made certain by their matching Clarks desert boots, passion for skateboarding and HBO's "The Wire." Photo by Marisa Zupan

But as they matured, so did their sense of style and their personal wardrobes. Paul notes, "We have always made items that we ourselves want to wear. It got so that we weren’t really wearing our own t-shirts anymore and the screen-printing process wasn’t holding our interest. I felt limited. At one of our weekly meetings, I told [Dave] Roma that I was thinking about taking a tie-making class. I knew Roma would be interested because he enjoys making things by hand - sure enough, he thought it was a great idea.”

The two crazy kids decided to embark on the journey, found a sewing class in the Lower East Side of Manhattan because "Yeah, we didn't know how to do that," Dave proclaims, and shortly after enrolled in another class on tie-making.

But this was only the beginning. The two novice needle-workers spent months locked in the whip cream factory, deconstructing old ties and reverse engineering them. "The process of making a tie is extremely intensive and time consuming," says Dave. "Our first seven or eight ties were bloody awful - bloody because we would often prick our fingers with the needle and bleed on the fabric; awful because we still had no idea what we were doing." But the two skater friends with absolutely no formal fashion or design background persisted and they began to perfect their new craft. Eventually, they began making perfect neckties.

Armed with this new skill, they experimented with fabrics - prints and textures - and with various tie widths. They gave their hand-crafted pieces away to family and friends in return for some honest feedback. People loved what they were doing and it wasn't long before they were selling at local design markets and small clothing boutiques in Brooklyn, Manhattan and beyond.