One Sunday evening in 2015, Patrick Grant received an email telling him that Cookson & Clegg, a Blackburn factory established in 1860 and one of his most trusted suppliers, was closing. Sixty people were about to lose their jobs, and a town that once helped clothe the world stood to lose another place where that knowledge was still being put to use.
Grant, the Savile Row tailor and Great British Sewing Bee judge, bought the factory. Rather than relying solely on the fluctuating orders of the fashion industry to keep it occupied, he went on to establish a brand designed to provide work during quieter periods, when seasonal production slowed and skilled machinists might otherwise have had little to do.
He called it Community Clothing. A decade later, the company works with more than fifty British factories and says it has generated close to half a million hours of skilled employment.
Set that story beside the one fashion has spent much of the past year telling about itself.
A succession of the world’s largest luxury houses has appointed new creative directors. Matthieu Blazy arrived at Chanel. Jonathan Anderson took the reins at Dior. Each announcement was followed by the familiar anticipation: the first collection, the new codes, the archival references and the question of whether one individual might restore momentum to a house built over generations.
There is nothing new about designers moving between brands, nor anything inherently wrong with it. Fashion needs new ideas. Yet the pace of recent appointments has exposed a recurring tension within luxury: houses sell permanence, but are increasingly expected to reinvent themselves through the vision of one person at the top.
Seen from the factory floor, a different measure of creativity emerges.
Private White V.C. operates from its Manchester factory, where garments are cut and sewn by people whose knowledge has been built over years rather than seasons. Its coats are designed to be repaired, with the expectation that ownership might extend beyond the next generation, let alone collection.
Sunspel has been producing fine cotton garments in Long Eaton since the nineteenth century. Its reputation rests on pieces whose apparent simplicity leaves little room for poor materials or careless construction. The familiar t-shirt is not treated as an event, but as something worth making exceptionally well.
John Smedley has produced knitwear at Lea Mills in Derbyshire since 1784. Its identity does not depend on the arrival of a new name every few years. It is held in the relationship between fibre, machinery, place and the people who understand how to bring them together.
In Walthamstow, Blackhorse Lane Ateliers makes raw selvedge denim and offers repairs for as long as its jeans are owned. Commercially, encouraging somebody to keep wearing the same pair might appear counterintuitive. As an expression of confidence in the product, it is difficult to improve upon.
These companies are not without creative direction. Their creativity is simply distributed differently. It sits with founders, cutters, machinists, technicians and designers, as well as in the accumulated knowledge of the factory itself. The identity belongs to the organisation rather than being borrowed from the person temporarily leading it.
For a long time, this appeared to be the less fashionable proposition. The attention, investment and most coveted products sat at the top of the market, where a new signature could transform the perception and price of an object almost overnight.
That proposition has become harder to sustain. Prices have continued to rise, while customers have grown more curious about what those prices represent. At the same time, the aesthetic associated with quiet luxury has proved remarkably easy to reproduce. A restrained camel coat, discreet knit or unbranded leather bag can now be found at almost every level of the market.
Provenance is more difficult to imitate. It cannot be reproduced through styling alone. It exists in a factory that remains open, in skills passed between generations and in the ability to explain who made something, where it was made and why it costs what it does.
This may be the more meaningful change taking place in fashion. The most interesting brands are not necessarily those searching for a new signature, but those rooted deeply enough to continue without one. Their relevance comes from a place, a particular way of making and an accountability that extends beyond the next set of financial results.
Grant has always been clear that Community Clothing began with employment rather than image. The purpose was to keep good factories alive and provide skilled people with reliable work. The clothes give that mission a viable form. Their quality is what allows it to endure.
There will always be value in the arrival of a brilliant designer. A new perspective can revive a house, challenge its assumptions and produce extraordinary work. But creative renewal is not the only form of progress available to fashion.
There is also value in remaining: in occupying the same building, maintaining the same machinery and improving an object without needing to reinvent it. It is less suited to the relentless pace of fashion news, but considerably better suited to the making of a wardrobe.
For Matter of Taste, that is the more interesting proposition, not because change is without value, but because continuity has been undervalued for too long.
Start with the people still making things, and the places that allow them to do it.