It’s 88 degrees and humid in Washington, DC, and the Metro train ahead of ours is broken down, so I’ll be late for my interview with Ministry of Supply, whose new store is opening in the District this Thursday.
There’s no AC on my train car. It’s hot and I’m starting to sweat and I’m a little stressed out. When I finally get to the Shaw storefront, founders Gahin Amarasiriwardena and Kit Hickey greet me with a smile and a bottle of water. The co-founders of the high-tech menswear company then begin describing to me the technology woven into their apparel, giving it sweat-wicking capability and ventilation. I’m quickly wishing I could trade in my outfit.
“Our motto is, if you dress smarter, you work smarter,” says Amarasiriwardena, the Chief Design Officer.
Ministry of Supply is a Boston-based company that approaches professional menswear with a process informed by engineering, something Amarasiriwardena knows well, having studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (CEO Aman Advani is also an engineer by training). To settle on items for the Ministry of Supply catalog the team sketches, prototypes, and tweaks designs, monitoring how the technology functions. It’s a process one expects to see in the development of racing wheels, or parkas for hiking in Yellowstone or even space suits — not typically professional menswear.
The walls of the new D.C. location are lined with rectangular racks that showcase the mostly-blue tones of the product line, although yellow objects like pens and plant containers visually accent the room. As Amarasiriwardena walks me through the store and pulls out different shirts, he casually mentions one incorporates NASA technology.
“It acts like a battery,” he says, describing how the shirt is designed to siphon off heat from the body, then return it to the wearer when they enter a chilly office space, for example.
Much of the Ministry of Supply catalog utilizes tech more common to athletic apparel than suits and ties. Amarasiriwardena tells me that customers care most about features like sweat-wicking capability, wrinkle-free material, and machine-washability, features he had a personal hand in testing. Amarasiriwardena gained substantial press coverage this spring when he clinched a Guinness World Record for running a half-marathon in a full Ministry of Supply suit to test and prove its performance.
Unfortunately for me, these clothes are outside my price range; high-tech but also high-end, a dress shirt will set you back $95 and suits start around $500.
Asked why Ministry of Supply chose the District for its third brick and mortar location, and not other major cities like New York City or Chicago, Amarasiriwardena mentioned clientele of a more button-up office culture akin to Capitol Hill congressional staffers or K St. lawyers and lobbyists. Additionally, Amarasiriwardena praised the collaborative atmosphere of DC, specifically mentioning shared work spaces like WeWork, which champions a principle that the new Ministry of Supply store subscribes to.
“The space combines the creative and the professional," Amarasiriwardena said. "We call it the ‘Work/Shop,’ because people can work and they can shop.”
A couch is nestled into one corner of the store, next to a large table whose surface sports a line of notebooks and pens, all for store patrons, who can also make use of WiFi and pick up a bottle of water.
How did Ministry of Supply chose to open a store in Shaw (in the base of the recently-constructed Shay building) versus, say, Georgetown? Amarasiriwardena listed the growing number of nearby food and coffee options, and the neighboring clothing stores. Retailers like Kit & Ace, Chrome, Hugh & Crye and Frank and Oak are all in the area.
The new DC location will have a launch event on Thursday June, 23, from 6 PM to 8 PM. There will also be drinks and ice cream made on the spot by NiceCream Factory. The founders will be present, the full product line on the shelves, and attendees will have the opportunity to win a number of items via raffle.
Ministry of Supply is located at 1924 8th Street, N.W.
