About Firth & Holm

Behind the brand

Made by one person. From Rhode Island's south shore.

Firth & Holm is run by Paul McCarthy. I grew up on Rhode Island's south shore. Bonnet Shores, Narragansett, Beavertail. That coast is most of the reason this brand exists.

My day job is dentistry. I trained at Boston University, did my residency at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, and have practiced in New York and New England since. It's serious craft, and I love it. But the audience is one nervous person at a time, in a chair they'd rather not be in.

Firth & Holm goes the other way. The work goes out into the world. To the beach, the boat, the dinner you didn't plan. That's most of it.

Creativity is the part I look forward to. Picking fabrics. Drawing the art. Figuring out what belongs on a piece of cotton, and how it should feel against skin in the kind of weather it'll be worn in.

Dentistry is precision work for a single room. This is the opposite. Pieces that go out into the world and live there. People wear them at the beach, on the train, to dinner. Once a shirt leaves here, it's nobody's project but the person wearing it. That's the whole appeal.

That's also why there's an Artist's Corner. For now, the art there is mine. I draw and paint when the workday's done. When other artists from the south shore join, their work goes up under their name. The filter stays the same: it only ships if I'd wear it.

The references are local. Cedar shingles gone grey from salt. A foggy morning on the rocks at Beavertail. The white line of a wake behind the ferry to Block Island. New England, but the version that earns its weekends. Not the one on a catalog cover.

Fewer drops, more care. A tee should still look like itself by August. A sweatshirt should soften, not pill. That's the bar.

Nothing goes up until I'd actually wear it. That's the only filter.

Press, collaborations, anything else. The contact form goes straight to me. I'll reply soon.