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From Savile Row to Community Clothing
Patrick Grant has a lot to say about clothes; how many we buy, how we value them, what they’re made from, and importantly who made them and where. From the Savile Row tailors Norton and Sons, the brand that he bought and rebuilt, which started his career in clothing, to the ready to wear label E. Tautz that he relaunched and won Menswear Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, and now his social enterprise Community Clothing, he has always been passionate about well-made clothes that stand the test of time.
Patrick is an outspoken advocate for radical change in the fashion industry, a regular on the TV and Radio, being best known for his role in the BAFTA nominated and BBC hit The Great British Sewing Bee, with ten series under his belt.
Community Clothing not only supports local clothing and textile manufacturers across the UK, but in doing so it allows us, the consumers, to buy direct from the makers and benefit from top quality clothes, but without the middle man. They don’t do Black Friday, nor end-of-season sale or mid-season discount, just exceptional quality clothes at the best price they can every single day.
For one past project, Community Clothing teamed up with sustainable British stationery makers Mark and Fold and the incredible Cumbrian-based Paper Foundation to develop a range of notebooks made from denim scraps collected up off their factory floor in Blackburn. The factory makes one of Community Clothing’s most popular items, the Selvedge jean.
In Patrick’s TV work, BBC Great Sewing Bee has played a small part in making us look again at our relationships with our clothes (and all of the other textile products in our homes) reminding us all that they should be valued, cared for, repaired, reused and hopefully passed on.
Patrick is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2018 he gave a TED Talk about the thinking behind Community Clothing. He is an ambassador for The King’s Foundation, a charity which supports education activities for people of all ages across the UK.
His latest book Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer Better Things Can Make Us Happier, Patrick Grant, is published by Harper Collins, and a Sunday Times best seller.
Buy Better from Community Clothing
Book signing Tuesday 3rd December – Meet Patrick and hear what he has to say in person at the Christopher Farr London showroom, along with Maria Speake co-founder of Retrouvius, AD 100 and salvage experts and masters of materiality.
RSVP and read more here.