Catholic menswear brand expands as founders aim to shape modern masculinity

Shepherd’s, a Catholic menswear brand, recently expanded by opening its first store in Dallas.

In a fashion culture saturated with passing trends and corporate logos, a new Catholic menswear brand is making clothes that will stand the test of time and inspire its wearers to something deeper — a daily practice of identity, discipline, and faith.

Founded on the idea that what you wear can reflect what you live for, Shepherd’s offers an alternative vision of masculinity shaped not by excess but by purpose.

Launched in 2023 by Chris Cottrell, Nathan Price, Austin Wright, and football star Harrison Butker, the brand specializes in made-to-measure garments including jackets, outerwear, shirts, pants, suits, and tuxedos. For customers who cannot come to their Kansas City and Dallas stores, they offer video-based fittings and ship try-on garments.

Experiencing great success at their headquarters in Kansas City, the luxury brand recently opened a new store in Dallas on Feb. 28. Shepherd’s offers its customers advanced fitting methods that involve over 100 adjustments for a precise fit and uses premier fabrics from Europe, primarily Italy and the United Kingdom.

EWTN News spoke with Cottrell about the new brand and how it aims to play a role in the lives of Catholic men.

EWTN News: What inspired you to create Shepherd’s?

Chris Cottrell: I think a couple of us on the team had interest, generally, in menswear, but I think what we saw was an opportunity to build a brand that was elevating and refined and kind of inherently Catholic without being overtly Catholic. It’s not like we have a crucifix on the inside of our jacket or saints on our socks, but the values kind of just speak through it.

I’m a convert and I actually met my first nun like four years ago at a conference. I had never met a nun before and she just had this glow about her. It comes from the amount of prayer, it comes from so much time in adoration, and she really was glowing. And you can look at her from across the room — I was lucky enough to have dinner with her — and it was just obvious that she was so close to the Lord.

That’s the kind of brand we wanted to create, where you didn’t have to say anything, it just felt different. And there’s no other brand that’s in the premium luxury space that has that. Everything else is so worldly, it doesn’t have the same values underneath it. And we wanted to create something special. And I think we’ve done that so far with Shepherd’s.

Can you speak a bit more about how the brand portrays Catholicism?

I often think of St. Paul’s letter … In one of his letters he says, old men do all these things, old women do all these things, young women do all these things, young men, self-control. That’s the only advice that he gives the young men: Be self-controlled. And for us, dressing well is a form of self-control. It’s a habit toward virtue.

Of course, it’s easier to wear a T-shirt and sweatpants or something, but we’re trying to help ourselves and our customers be both comfortable in the clothing but also own stuff that they’re proud of, that’s truly made for them, and is unique that they want to wear and it makes it easier to practice virtue by dressing well.

And then of course, you have the effect of wearing the clothes. Like the self-discipline of going to prayer regularly forms you in discipline, but then also you have the effect of prayer. So for us, we have the discipline of getting dressed well and then you have the effect of being well dressed. And every girl knows this too in a different way, but every guy knows the feeling of putting on [something] they feel really confident in and they just stand up a little straighter, right? They feel more like there’s a gravitas and they take their life a little more seriously and they kind of live up to an expectation to be their best version of themselves.

Why do you think a brand like Shepherd’s is needed right now in our culture?

I mean other than the Church, of course, the last great institution that is under attack right now is the family. It’s the concepts of men and women and it’s the concept of the family.

And Harrison [Butker] has been a great exemplar of putting family first and speaking out about Christ and speaking out about our values, but we wanted to build a brand that was pro-men — masculine and associated with masculine beauty and built for men. That’s one of the reasons we don’t do women’s tailoring.

The manufacturers we work with, the mills that we work with, most of our competitors would offer women’s wear as a way to grow your customer base and grow revenue, but we don’t simply because the values we’re trying to build, we view them as masculine values. And men are under attack everywhere. And so if you look especially for young men, like where are they getting advice? It’s kind of either like Andrew Tate or YouTube and that’s not great.

It’s not a great place for young men, for our next generation … to be formed as men. So we want to, obviously, do the clothing, but also build a brand around that and an ethos around that that is built to encourage men in the life that we view as good, which is a life centered on faith, family, friends, and work that matters.

What is your main goal or hope with Shepherd’s?

When we started the business, we as a founding team, the four of us committed to kind of have a double bottom line. One being we want to build a great business. I think this is part of doing good work — doing our work as unto the Lord — is that we build a business that’s successful, that’s sustainable, that’s profitable, that we have the money to offer benefits, we have good pay … So we want to build a successful business.

The other part is we want to influence the culture. We want someone to come as a young man, maybe a recent graduate, come to Shepherd’s and get a couple garments from us and bit by bit … being around our community that we’re really building, have that influence their life … Three to four degrees of change in your early 20s can lead to a very different life, can lead to a very different outcome.

The thing we want to see is people who have somehow in their life been affected positively by the brand or brought closer to their faith or been more successful in their career or carried themselves differently and had a better marriage for that. So really that’s the dream goal.

For me personally, I would love to in 10 years overhear somebody saying, “Oh, I went to this cool brand, Shepherd’s, and I read this great piece of content they had, and I bought a jacket and I just love their stuff. It really made me want to try harder and so I got this new job and then I met this girl.” That’s the kind of business that we want to build.