The whispers around Auckland lately have pretty much all been about Little Brother closing down. I heard it brought up twice on Friday night alone, everyone loves to gossip, but this has gone a bit past that, and was pretty much an accepted fact.

Little Brother being a favorite of ours, and one of NZ’s only high end menswear labels (and also the only NZ stockist of Balmain Girls done good, Marsu Homme Shoes), we thought it’d be a good idea to contact owner and creator Murray Crane to set the story straight. And he has assured us that Little Brother will NOT be shutting down. However a few changes are being made.

“We have signed a distribution agreement with Barkers , Little Brother will be available in all of their stores starting next year.”

We then asked if their current designer Matt Nash will still be designing and whether or not their boutiques will remain open, and Murray has informed us that the High St store will be shutting down, but Matt will continue with Little Brother and that the range will not change at all. Fairly re-assuring news.

Barkers itself is one of the longest running menswear labels in New Zealand, starting back in 1972, they have 21 stores nationwide. Which will give Little Brother great accessibility to the smaller towns of NZ.In 2006 Barkers was bought out by Zac de Silva & Chris Greive. Who have been taking the brand in a more youthful direction since taking creative control. Even enlisting the former Head Designer and Brand Manager of Little Brother, Des Rusk (who has been running his own eponymous label since 2004) to design a capsule collection for them in November last year.

If you were to ask For-Tomorrow, we’d say this is definitely a sign of the Financial Times, teaming up with Barkers will definitely damage LB’s ‘cred’, but it’s better than folding completely, gotta look on the bright side of these things though.