Alice Made This – with a little help from McLaren

All Alice Made This products are made in Britain but for our latest collection, we wanted to collaborate with an innovative, industrial British brand renowned for precision and attention to detail.

Our ethos is refining industry, so we take an industrial process – anything from the production of aeroplane parts to military uniforms – and translate it into a cufflink design that tells a story around materials and manufacturing techniques.

McLaren's a great match for us because all our accessories are performance-related and our core aesthetic is clean and minimal. Rather than just creating a F1-inspired cufflink, we thought it would be interesting for a fan of McLaren to be able to own a little piece of a McLaren car, so we've integrated genuine McLaren components in our cufflink and key-ring designs.

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Every part of a McLaren vehicle has a unique index code on it and there are different groups of codes – some represent a part that goes into the car for a whole season, others a specific car in a certain race with a particular driver.

At the end of a racing season, any remaining parts are moved to the warehouse for storage, making space for new ones for the new season. There may be four pieces left of one part and 20 of another, but all the different components are produced in very small batches, so each of our pieces are limited editions.

As 2016 marks McLaren's 50-year anniversary of involvement in Formula One, we used original parts from three of its acclaimed models: the MP4-23 and the MP4-27 for the cufflinks and the MP4-28 for the key ring.

The MP4-23 was the car in which Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 World Drivers' Championship; the MP4-27 was driven by both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton and finished in the top three in the Constructors' Championship in 2012, and the MP4-28 was driven by Jenson Button and Sergio Perez in 2013.

The McLaren parts tend to be cast in titanium or high-performance steel, and we paired them with stainless steel to form the cufflinks and key ring. We chose steel as it's the most robust and long-lasting material we can use to house other elements and it doesn't react if other metals touch it.

The cufflinks are made in two stages: we do initial concept sketches and technical drawings then produce 3D-printed prototypes to check the proportions and make sure we're happy with everything. The way the McLaren components fit onto the steel parts of the cufflink is extremely precise, so there's no room for error.

After that, we take the prototypes to our factory in Hertford and translate our drawings into a specialist programme so the chief precision turner can set the machine and run the design through. To ensure we achieved the sharpness of the McLaren speed mark, we finish by etching it on to the cufflink using a spun-diamond engraving process.

McLaren is one of the world's most successful F1 teams and we're proud to bring some of its history back to life using British manufacturing methods.

ALICE WALSH's career in product and furniture design has included roles with the likes of Habitat, Tom Dixon and Conran. When she struggled to find suitable cufflinks for her husband Ed, she founded her own brand, Alice Made This, to lend her innovative approach to men's accessories; alicemadethis.com