PATRICK GRANT
COOKSON & CLEGG
FRIEND OF AUBIN
Patrick Grant is a businessman and fashion designer with a background in material sciences and engineering. He is the owner of Cookson & Clegg, a garment manufacturer in Blackburn who we are proud to be working with for our launch collection. He is a campaigner for British manufacturing, passionate about regeneration and about making best quality products that last. If you watch The Great British Sewing Bee (for which Grant is one of the two judges) this passion for well-made, quality clothing is easy to see. From his ‘fixer upper’ in the Dales to saving Savile Row men’s tailoring brands from closure, to injecting new life into his clothing factory Cookson & Clegg rescued in 2015; Grant is the fashion industry’s knight in ethical armour. He has an incredible eye for seeing not only the potential in things, but also the importance and significance of their standing in history. He has a deep respect for the ancient crafts which make up the clothing manufacturing process, and can see that the struggling UK textile making regions, large parts within the north of England and Scotland, need investing in.
Patrick is the personification of our shared philosophy; that buying a select few top-quality products is better than buying more poor-quality products that won’t last. That Better is Greater Than More. For Patrick, this has always been his way in life. He can remember as a child saving up for months to buy “one really nice thing” and “some of them I’ve still got 35 years later” he is proud to recall. It’s this philosophy that Grant applies full heartedly to all his projects, from his men’s tailoring brands Norton & Sons and E. Tautz to his grow local, make local, buy local UK clothing brand Community Clothing. He believes strongly that clothing brands need to behave responsibly and to produce good quality clothing that is “affordable and that people can feel proud to wear”.
Patrick’s Blackburn based clothing factory, Cookson & Clegg, is a benchmark for how our UK factories could be with enough investment. He is passionate about factory-based work and believes it hasn’t had the same sense of elevation as other crafts. Patrick started his career in a Merseyside factory making cables and is incredibly knowledgeable about the potential environments they create. He makes a comparison to government investment in the motoring industry where pristine factories with fountains on the forecourts impress any visitor. Where clothing factories on the other hand are far from glamorous, many housed in not-fit-for-purpose buildings and barely hanging on to a credible business. That is the clothing factories that have survived! There used to be around 1.6 million people in the UK employed within textile and clothing manufacture, now it’s under a hundred thousand- and that downturn happened all too quickly.
"THERE IS ONLY ONE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL,
WE’RE ALL HEADING IN A DIRECTION TOWARDS
CONSUMING LESS, CONSUMING BETTER STUFF,
CREATING LESS WASTE IN THE WORLD."
If quality over quantity is Patrick’s first raison d’etre his second lies in bringing communities together, regenerating industry within those communities and putting people back into work. The company which embodies these essential beliefs is Community Clothing. This social enterprise is Patrick’s “attempt to try and re-address a lot of the ills” in the fashion industry. As a brand Community Clothing are successfully growing, processing, and making high quality garments and in doing so employing people within the UK and his local community of Lancashire and driving business back to UK factories. “Creating jobs and pathways to jobs where they are desperately needed”. Community Clothing is about giving people the choice to buy products that are sustainable and ethical; ensuring that materials are ethically sourced and that the team of people working within the manufacturing process are well cared for and paid fairly.
"FACTORIES CAN PROVIDE STRUCTURE, GUIDANCE, SENSE OF COMMUNITY, THEY ARE INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL PLACES TO WORK"
There’s nothing revolutionary about our slower, more cherished shared philosophy, it was how it used to be for our parent’s generation and beyond, and most poignantly during wartime. Somehow it got lost along the way within an era of consumerism. Evidently this has proven to be very damaging, the mindset of wanting more and more regardless of where it’s made, it’s quality or its carbon impact on the earth. We used to know where our clothes came from and what they were made of. Patrick cherishes things that are truly well-made, truly British, he is holding the torch high for slow fashion. Aubin’s path of Better is Greater Than More runs parallel to this and we are very proud to be partnered with Cookson and Clegg as one of our UK clothing manufacturers. To work alongside someone who resonates so clearly with what Aubin represents is a joy and the relationship, we hope, will grow and grow.
