THE JOURNAL
Mr David de Rothschild is a charming and engaging environmentalist with (and we say this affectionately) an emphasis on the “mentalist”. The 6ft 4in luxuriantly bearded Brit bounds around his airy Venice Beach studio with infectious effervescence. At any one time he and his team of creatives seem to have a dozen different projects simmering, and he checks in on each like a chef overseeing a busy restaurant kitchen.
Right now the project that is coming to the boil is his sustainable label The Lost Explorer, which arrived on MR PORTER this week. A trained naturopath, he’s also putting the finishing touches to a range of chemical-free grooming and nutrition products, which MR PORTER will also be stocking in due course. He’s halfway through spritzing everyone in range with some refreshing face mist when he asks if anyone would like to try one of his herbal teas. Or hell, his organic The Lost Explorer Mezcal. And that’s before he mentions the bikes and surfboards and furniture he’s designing. Or the books he’s writing, including a short story for children. Or the next expedition he’s planning “somewhere under the ocean”.
“There might be a slightly haphazard feel to some of the products we’re creating, but this is how my brain works,” he says, as we sit in the sun-dappled courtyard by his house, a converted photographer’s studio that he shares with his wife, actress Ms Karina Deyko, their cat, Fifi, and their dog, Banjo. “Looking from the outside in you might go, ‘This is all over the place.’ And it probably is.” Literally. Each of his products is inspired by things he has seen or collected, or felt was missing from his far-flung travels as an explorer. He’s deeply tanned, having just come back from salmon fishing in remotest Iceland, and has also been to Japan, Mexico and Nepal so far this year. Next up: South Korea. “Underneath it all there is a common thread – nature and curiosity.”
Mr de Rothschild, 39, is the most well-travelled member of MR PORTER’s esteemed Style Council. He divides his life into “three buckets”: adventurer, activist and entrepreneur. “They’re all intrinsically linked,” he says. “They each have their own place but they work together symbiotically.”
As a National Geographic adventurer, he has completed a number of madcap expeditions over the years, such as skiing across both the North and South Poles. These days, his projects always draw attention to an environmental issue. Most famously, in 2010, he and a crew successfully sailed Plastiki – a boat made out of 12,500 recycled plastic bottles held together with cashew-nut glue – 8,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney. The purpose was to draw attention to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating plastic soup of debris, estimated to be twice the size of France, that kills hundreds of thousands of seabirds every year.
As an activist, he is heavily involved with the United Nations in promoting the annual World Environment Day and is lobbying to get Nature a seat at the UN. He speaks and writes and presents TV shows all about the environment – and manages to do so without coming across as worthy or weird.
The idea for The Lost Explorer brand came about through his sense of unease working with expedition sponsors who wanted him to promote products that didn’t chime with his eco principles. “There’s always been this rub between the words ‘technical’ and ‘sustainable’ because a lot of performance fabrics are very toxic,” he says. So rather than compromise or criticise, he decided to create his own environmentally sound products as another way of delivering his message. He has been working with a pioneering Swiss textile company called Schoeller to produce natural performance materials such as wool corkshell – a breathable, water- and stain-resistant fabric with similar properties to Gore-Tex, except that it’s made from merino wool and recycled wine corks – which Mr de Rothschild uses for much of the outerwear and also accessories such as bags. He speaks excitedly about natural fabrics that employ bio-mimicry, with temperature-regulating fibres that open and close, like pine cones, according to body heat. He also uses water-repellent fabrics that imitate the natural barrier of duck feathers.
The Lost Explorer range is designed for travel and versatility. Pieces can be worn a number of times and suit various situations. This idea is best exemplified by the three-piece boiled cotton and wool blend Traveler Suit, which looks elegant but has the comfort and feel of pyjamas. “I wanted something I could wear on the plane and look smart in but also lie down and sleep in and then wake up and still look smart,” he says. None of his products has the obvious look of technical performance-wear. The Corkshell Mountain Jacket, for example, is something that could be worn on a weekend climb or on a weekday commute over a suit.
His cottons, cashmeres and wools are organic. All his dyes are natural: indigo for blue, hibiscus for pink, green tea for green, black tea for light grey, chestnut bark for charcoal grey. Their washed-out colours are complementary and they have a lived-in look and feel. The collections – Ocean, Mountain, Desert and Jungle – suit conditions rather than seasons. Mr de Rothschild feels people should buy less but buy smarter, and then wear it for years. “In an industry that’s very focused on margins, turnaround times and trends, it’s hard not to get sucked into that vortex,” he says. “Our products don’t save the world – the planet doesn’t need more stuff – but what I’m trying to say is, let’s just do things better, let’s try to be better.”
He’s keen not to come across as preachy. “Whatever you do though, don’t call this ‘eco-fashion’. As soon as I hear those words, I want to puke in my mouth,” he says. “Worthiness is the death of the cause.” Too often sustainable apparel looks and or feels inferior, the sartorial equivalent of a bland-tasting vegan meal. And that’s not good enough. Mr de Rothschild understands that for his business to be successful, it first needs to deliver aesthetically and practically. “I want people to put it on and say, ‘This looks great, this feels great.’ And then if they happen to look at the label and see it was made using organic materials and less water, or using fair trade and labour, or its footprint was offset in some way, it suddenly feels even better.” He gets frustrated with brands that market themselves as sustainable, but whose claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. “This isn’t a marketing gimmick. The Lost Explorer is a brand built on solid foundations, and hopefully it has a positive ripple effect.”
None of this is easy, or quick, or cheap. But, as the name The Lost Explorer would suggest, Mr de Rothschild has “never sought the path of least resistance”. He has deliberately plotted his own course, even if it takes longer to get to where he wants to go. It’s a constantly evolving process, developing fabrics and sustainable technologies, improving production practices, minimising air miles – which is why on the brand’s website it claims, rather cryptically, to have been established in 2025.
As a member of one of the world’s most famous and wealthiest banking families, with high-society connections, Mr de Rothschild could have done anything. Equally, he could have done nothing. A former champion equestrian with a master’s degree in naturopathy, a hyperactive mind and restless sense of wanderlust, he asked himself, “Do I want to sit in an office all day with a tie on, doing things that I might not necessarily believe in or be 100 per cent emotionally attached to? Or, do I want to follow the things I am really connected to, passionate about and could maybe have an impact on?’”
He spent his twenties exploring, “bouncing all over the place, trying to absorb as much as I could”. His thirties have been about using that experience and focusing his energies on formulating a plan. “And I think my forties will be spent implementing that plan.”
Although he grew up and was educated in England, he says he finds Europe “stifling to human potential” because of the strict “hierarchy” and inherent “scepticism”. Having travelled the world, he could choose to settle anywhere. For the past seven-and-a-half years he’s been based in the heart of Venice, California, a three-minute skate from the bars and restaurants of Abbot Kinney. He lives one block from the beach and tends to bookend his working day with a surf and a hike.
We’re now sitting on a boulder atop Mandeville Canyon, overlooking the hazy sprawl of Los Angeles below. It’s a short drive in Mr de Rothschild’s space-age, self-driving electric Tesla to come and let Banjo, a mix of breeds, off the leash. “Dogs are the ultimate explorers.” Down to our right is the Pacific Ocean and Silicon Beach, to our left are the skyscrapers and factories of a newly resurgent Downtown LA, where Mr de Rothschild is able to make some of his products. Hollywood shimmers in the distance. “We’re 20 minutes away from a metropolis, yet you’ve got coyotes, mountain lions, rattlesnakes and wildness all around you,” says Mr de Rothschild, patting his panting dog. “I’ll go sit in the water as I did this morning and I’ll be paddling and catching a wave, and I’m like, ‘I’m in a major city, but I’m catching a wave. How is that possible?’ I surf, I climb in Joshua Tree, I can camp in some of the most beautiful national parks in the world. Hopefully, taking that time out in nature to reset your psyche allows you to put that back into the product.” He’s mindful not to be too tethered to the studio. He, too, needs to be off the leash.
There is that oft-quoted line in Mr Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word track “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen”): “Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard / Live in northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.” Mr de Rothschild has a view on that. “I don’t know if ‘soft’ is a bad thing,” he says. “Softness, to me, is an ability to let things in. I think there’s a certain capacity here for people to be optimistic.”
The neighbourhood of Venice has changed a great deal in recent years from the laid-back, artsy, skate-and-surf enclave of oddballs it once was – Snapchat and Google have moved in alongside the tech startups and disruptors of Silicon Beach. But the positive air of bohemian entrepreneurialism suits Mr de Rothschild rather well. “Living in such close proximity to all this innovation, to the health and wellness industry, to nature – it’s inspiring, it’s refreshing,” he says. “I feel like that West Coast vibe is woven into all our products.”