Community Clothing by Patrick Grant

 

Grant’s episode on Desert Island Discs will air on BBC Radio 4 at 11.15am on Sunday.

 

PILLAR

OF THE

COMMUNITY

Men's Fashion & Outfit Ideas

India Price

-Menswear Editor

https://www.johnlewis.com/content/fashion/men/patrick-grant-community-clothing

 

From juggling huge brands to helping deprived communities, Patrick Grant has had an incredible career. As John Lewis becomes the first to stock his Community Clothing line, we talk to the groundbreaking designer about his life and work

Patrick will be kickstarting the My John Lewis Festival of Sewing with an event on Wednesday 21st of March, starting at 6pm. Please join us for an evening of conversation and an open Q&A with Patrick.

 

There are those who say that they want things to change, and then there’s Patrick Grant. A man so invested in improving the British fashion and manufacturing industry that he has moved his entire life from London to Blackburn in order to devote more time and effort into effecting that change. 

 

It’s hard not to be aware of the man and his work. You may recognise Patrick from his role as a judge on The Great British Sewing Bee. Perhaps you’re a fan of the brands he heads, which include Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons, menswear pioneer E. Tautz and the basics brand that we’re talking to him about today, Community Clothing. You may well have worn a piece of clothing made at Cookson & Clegg, a manufacturer that he saved from going under six years ago. Safe to say his influence is hard to overstate.

 

We sat down with Patrick over Zoom to discuss the fashion industry and much more, including what it means to have Community Clothing – the five-year-old brand that he founded in a bid to restore prosperity to the UK manufacturing industry – join the John Lewis family for the first time.

 

On the

IMPORTANCE OF HONESTY

Patrick’s 15 years in fashion have seen him cover off pretty much every role available – from creative director and designer to manufacturer and factory owner – giving him a unique insight into what’s really important in the industry.

 

‘John Lewis has a strong sense of honesty and trust, two things which are really important both for me and Community Clothing,’ Patrick explains. ‘In everything that we do for the brand, we try to be completely transparent and honest, right down to the way we shoot our product.’ Retouching and unrealistic beauty ideals are, refreshingly, out of the window. ‘We want people to be able to relate to Community Clothing and we want our clothing to represent our community.’

 

 Patrick Grant

On

COMMUNITY CLOTHING

Community Clothing was born when Patrick spotted a gap in the market that desperately needed to be filled. ‘You used to be able to go anywhere on the UK high street and buy really high-quality, affordable clothing,’ he says. ‘Now, you can get affordable clothing but it’s just not the quality that it used to be. Long-lasting, high-quality, affordable clothing was missing from the British clothing landscape.’

 

The Blackburn-based brand launched five years ago. It is defiantly local – right down to the homegrown photographer and the models, who are from a nearby school and the wider community. Patrick is particularly fond of Bob, a retiree and now model, who he met at the bowling club in Blackburn. Bob’s wife Barbara also comes to the shoots to make the tea and hand out biscuits.

 

“Long-lasting, high-quality, affordable clothing was missing from the British clothing landscape”

Patrick Grant

 

‘I understand the price that British shoppers are prepared to pay for clothing, so I started to think about how we could make the product in British factories, using great quality cloth, and still keep it affordable.’ Patrick realised that people wanted something that went against the grain of traditional seasonal pieces and standard manufacturing practices.

 

‘There’s a fixed model in the clothing industry and everyone does the same thing, to a greater or lesser extent. It’s based around designing new stuff season after season and always moving around to find a cheaper way of making those pieces. But I understood that in order for a factory to work, it needed to be operating on a high level of output 365 days a year.’

 

Patrick Grant

On the

POWER OF COMMUNITY

‘We set out to create as much economic value in the town where we manufacture as we can,’ Patrick explains. ‘The reason that we shoot with local photographers, local models, and use a local Blackburn studio is so that the money we pay everyone actually goes into the pockets of those in the local community.’

 

And it’s not just the shoots that Community Clothing does locally. The Cookson & Clegg manufacturer that Patrick owns is also in Blackburn, so he’s created a community of factory workers to make the clothes, using locally crafted materials. ‘The manufacturing industry used to be the beating heart of a community. The sense of purpose and pride, as well as the economic prosperity and cohesion that came from the industry, has disappeared,’ explains Patrick. ‘The loss of these industries has resulted in a lot of things, but most importantly the breakdown of community.’

 

 Patrick Grant

On

BRITISH-MADE CLOTHING

The rise of fast fashion and a declining British textile industry gave Patrick the push to start Community Clothing. But how does he keep prices down, without losing quality or, indeed, using materials or labour from abroad? ‘We want to encourage people to slow down their consumption,’ he argues. ‘We have two design principles: simplify the purchasing process for the customer and make things easier for the factory. Where other brands might have seven different fabrics for seven different coats, or a slight variety in their material for different pieces like a hoodie or joggers, we almost always use the same fabric within each category.’

 

And rather than importing fabrics, 90% of those used by Community Clothing are made in the UK. ‘The only thing that we don’t get in this country is our denim, and that’s because there’s only one very expensive producer of denim in the UK,’ says Patrick. ‘Instead, our denim is sourced from two super-sustainable and ethical firms – one in Turkey and one in Portugal.’

 

“Everything that we do is to sustain and create jobs in the UK textile industry and to help restore economic prosperity in some of the most deprived communities”

Patrick Grant

Patrick can reel off the names of his local suppliers without having to consult a phone or notebook. There’s the raincoat material from British Millerain in Rochdale, the jersey for sweatshirts and T-shirts from Leicester, the rugby shirt cloth from a specialist in the midlands.

 

Patrick proudly declares that ‘the yarn for our T-shirts is spun in Manchester, the jersey is knitted and dyed in Leicester, and then it’s cut and sewn in our factory in Blackburn. We have a tiny, tiny footprint. The fundamental goal of everything that we do as a brand is to sustain and create jobs in the UK textile industry and to help restore economic prosperity in some of the most deprived communities in the country.’

 

Patrick Grant

On the

FUTURE OF FASHION

‘We’ve got modest ambitions, but each year we want to continue to grow and improve, and to have a positive impact on the people that we work with and the dialogue that surrounds the industry,’ he says. At last count, Patrick and his team had created 140,000 hours of work since 2015, with that number doubling every year. So far, they have 28 factories in 24 different towns, a number that they also aim to keep growing. The aim is to create 5,000 full-time jobs.

 

So, what’s next for Community Clothing and Patrick? ‘We want to make big social change,’ he answers. ‘We’ve already had a very positive impact for Blackburn, and we hope to do the same for lots of other communities. It’s genuinely incredibly rewarding to be working in a business where everyone who comes into contact with it says great things.

 

‘I’m lucky enough that, because I’m on TV on The Great British Sewing Bee, I’ve managed to talk about sustainability, reuse and repair and get those issues to a much broader audience,’ he says. ‘I’m fortunate to have a voice that can help move the discussion of clothing in a positive way because it really can be a positive thing. We’ve seen how it can create good jobs, prosperity and happiness in communities all across the UK.’