We interview Patrick Grant, Great British Sewing Bee judge, former director of Savile Row house Norton & Sons, and owner of sustainable brand Community Clothing! Patrick takes us behind the scenes of revered bespoke tailoring houses and discusses what it takes to become a Savile Row Tailor. We also chat with him about his journey to where he is now, buying fewer but better things, and the amazing vibe on the Sewing Bee set!
The transcript for this episode is on this page at the end of the show notes.
Show Notes:
Find Patrick Online:
- Instagram: @patrickgrantism
- Twitter: @paddygrant
Patrick’s Books:
Patrick’s Other Projects:
- Website
- Instagram: @community_clothing
- Newsletter
Other Mentions:
Transcript:
Caroline: We are recording today on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw peoples, including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam, and K’ómoks first nations. Hello and welcome to Love to Sew. I’m Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns.
Helen: And I’m Helen, the designer behind Helen’s Closet Patterns and Cedar Quilt Co.
Caroline: We’re two sewing buds who love to sew and it’s literally all we want to talk about.
Helen: Today we’re talking with Patrick Grant, one of the judges on the Great British Sewing Bee. Patrick joins us to talk about his new book, The Savile Row Suit, and take us behind the scenes of a day in the life of a Savile Row craftsperson. We also chat about his ready-to-wear brand, Community Clothing, and 10 seasons of The Great British Sewing Bee.
Caroline: If you love to sew, this is your show.
Helen: Hello, Patrick. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Patrick: Hello, ladies. My absolute pleasure.
Helen: We can’t believe we get the opportunity to chat with you, Patrick. Truly, we’re so excited. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?
Patrick: my name is Patrick Grant. I am a British clothing designer. And I’m probably best known as one of the judges on the excellent BBC series, The Great British Sewing Bee.
Caroline: Ahh! Oh my gosh, our listeners are gonna be thrilled.
Patrick: Hooray! Whoops and screams.
Caroline: Yes. Indeed.
Helen: Yeah, I think our listeners are going to be so thrilled to get a chance to hear a little bit more about you today. So can you take us way back and tell us how and when you first learned how to sew?
Patrick: Well, I didn’t do an awful lot of sewing when I was little. I did lots and lots of other sorts of making, right the way through school. I was really lucky at school. We got woodwork and pottery and metalwork and all sorts of fun things, but I didn’t do much sewing. I did a bit, so what I did was I would alter my trousers and do a little bit of alteration just to make clothes fit me better. And, you know, if I, if I had trousers that weren’t quite skinny enough in the period when sort of skinny trousers were a thing, I would alter them and I would just hand sew them. And then I sort of, wasn’t really making clothes, but I would, I would alter and print on things. And I was always really into clothes. But I would spend days trawling through the charity shops and secondhand shops trying to find things. And then I would adjust them and sometimes dye them and print on them to kind of make them the way I had. But I didn’t do an awful lot of making, really, until I started work at Norton & Sons, which was only 20 years ago.
Caroline: Wow. So what was the catalyst, the inspiration, like, what gave you that interest in Norton & Sons and, and acquiring that business and, and tailoring and all of that?
Patrick: Well I mean, I had, I had always loved clothes, even as a very young kid I was massively into the clothes I wore and making sure they looked neat and tidy and always presenting myself in a very particular way. I remember, my mum tells a story about me going to a wedding. And I’d been sort of dressed up as a page boy in this outfit, this sort of sailor outfit that I really didn’t like. So I threw myself in a fountain so that they’d have to get me changed because I didn’t like what I was wearing. And then on my first day at school, there’s a photo of me standing in front of the house in Edinburgh and I’m sort of beaming from ear to ear and I’ve got my school uniform on, I’ve got, my shoes are really nice and shiny, my socks are perfectly pulled up, my tie is perfectly tied and sitting right in the middle of the V in my jumper. And I really, really wanted to make such a good impression on my first day of school that the night before, I’d actually given myself a haircut in the bathroom with my mum’s pinking shears or something. So my hair looked like an absolute dog’s dinner. But I looked, and my, my mum and dad were like, “Well, off you go, son.” You know, “You look lovely. See you later.” But I looked absolutely so pleased with myself. And I was always just really interested in clothes: how they looked, how they were made, the stories behind them, where they came from. And you know, as a teenager, very early on, I told my parents that they weren’t gonna buy my clothes anymore. So really, I think before I even became a teenager, I was vetting everything that was bought for me as clothing and I had a very strong opinion on it and, and that continued right through my teens and into my twenties.
So I’d always loved clothes and I’d actually particularly really quite liked tailored clothes. Then in my early twenties, I sort of worked out what I thought really worked for me in terms of my own personal style. And that was kind of what I did. I was like, “Right, I’m done with trainers. I’m done with jeans. I’m just going to wear tailored trousers and nice knitted sweaters and, you know, maybe some jackets. And that’s my thing.” And I was also really fascinated with handmade stuff. So whether it was pottery or wooden artifacts or clothes or whatever it was, things that were handmade have always held a really huge fascination for me. I’ve always been fascinated with the kind of lineage of craftsmanship, the different ways in which different people in different parts, even of the same country, make things. And so the craftsmanship side of what was happening on Savile Row was, was always really fascinating to me. And then it was the stories. So, the history of these houses, the stories of the people that had passed through them, the stories of the characters that worked there. There was always something really appealing to me about old brands that had great stories.
And so when you looked at Savile Row, you had all three of those things. You had exceptional clothing, beautiful, stylish clothes; you had wonderful craftsmanship; and you had stories. And, you know, if you drew that sort of Venn diagram of those three things, right in the middle would be Savile Row. And so I was finishing up a post grad degree and I came across an advert in the back of the paper. It was the back of the Financial Times. It was a section called “Businesses for Sale.” You know, a bit like the sort of Lonely Hearts. I kind of couldn’t believe it. And I wrote, I wrote them a letter, and this little advert just said, you know, “For Sale, Tailors to kings, emperors, and presidents,” you know, “Write to Mr. Granger.” And I, so, you know, it wasn’t that long ago, but there was no email address or anything technically advanced like that. So I wrote him a letter and he wrote back and sent me this information. And I went to see the place and I fell in love with it. And it was, I couldn’t believe that an actual real Savile Row tailor’s was for sale in the back of the paper. And that was it. I decided I wanted to buy it. I decided that that was what I was going to do. You know, all of my classmates were off to earn millions running hedge funds and being management consultants and I bought a knackered old tailor’s on Savile Row.
Helen: It’s such a beautiful story. It feels almost like a fantasy. I love this tale. I would read a novel about this story of you buying this business, taking it over. It’s just so whimsical and interesting. And now you’ve written this incredible book, which we’re here to talk about today, The Savile Row Suit. And we just want to tell our listeners that this book is absolutely gorgeous. It’s like a big coffee table style book with a linen binding and beautiful illustrations, lovely paper. It’s so nice to touch, but it’s also an incredible reference book for sewists. There’s so much information about technique in it. Really, you’ve outdone yourself. So we are so excited to chat with you about it today. What inspired you to create this book about Savile Row and everything that goes into a Savile Row suit?
Patrick: Well, we, we actually talked, I did a talk about the book, at Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly, which is just around the corner from Savile Row. and A couple of the other people who helped me write the book were at the talk. And I sort of said, well, we’ve been, we’ve been thinking about this for a while, for a couple of years. And this voice at the back goes, “How about seven years?” And it was like, I think we’ve been talking about writing this book for a really long time. Because there isn’t one. There isn’t a Savile row reference book. And, there’s a book by The Tailor, and there’s a, there’s a set of books by, by the Tailor that were
produced by the Tailor and Cutter Magazine, which was the trade magazine, the sort of bible of the tailoring industry. And they produced these books in, in the sort of twenties, which were a, in theory they were a, a Savile Row tailoring manual. But, you know, the section on trouser making was about 10 pages long and you know, it sort of said, “Well, then attach the waistband” and then it’s like, you know, you have to be a Savile Row tailor to be able to follow the book, pretty much. And so, we felt that there was this sort of obvious need for something that showed people how to do what, what everyone in the community on Savile Row was doing. And increasingly, because of Sewing Bee, people were asking me if there was a tailoring book that I could recommend, and of course there wasn’t one. And, you know, the Tailor and Cutter manuals, you know, have been out of print for 70, 80 years and you can’t, you know, they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. But also, I’ve worked nigh on 20 years, and I haven’t, I’ve stopped working there now. I’m still a director of the business, but I now focus all of my time and energy on Community Clothing, which is a newer business that I started, making clothes in all the amazing factories in the UK. And I sort of was coming to a point where, you know, I knew that I’d spent two decades working in this extraordinary community. I’d had the most amazing time working in amongst this extraordinary set of people. And I wanted to do something that celebrated all of them as well.
And I also felt that it was important. I still think it’s important that we have a historical record of this craft for the sake of posterity. And, you know, there have been lots of books written about the history of Savile Row from the front, from the kind of customer-facing side. You know, there are lots of great books where you can go and find out which general and which king and which duke had what made at what house. And that’s all fascinating stuff, but nobody had ever really written a book that celebrated what the real heart of Savile Row is, which is the people who make the stuff. And I’d read a book by a lady called Dorothy Hartley, who had gone ‘round England in the 1930s, maybe 40s. And she had documented all these amazing English country crafts. And she had very painstakingly interviewed lots of people about, you know, wheelwrighting and scythe making and all this amazing stuff and she put it in a book. And I read that last year for the first time and I was like, “It’s amazing, this book, and it’s such a beautiful record.” And, again, it sort of further reinforced in my mind the need to put down on paper the absolute intricacy with which all of this stuff is done. And I also, you know, I’ve worked with the tailors who helped me make this book for a long time. And, you know, I’ve enormous and unstinting respect for them. You know, I am not a Savile Row tailor, you know, to be a Savile Row tailor, is a life’s work. You know, you, you apprentice for a number of years. You know, in the case of coat making, it might be four years, and in the case of being a cutter, it might be five years. You do that 40 hours a week, every week, full time, you know, and then you start making for yourself, and then 20 years later you can call yourself a master. You know, I never did that. I learned the rudimentary basics. I knew how to make a pair of trousers. I knew how to make a coat. I learned how to make shirts. But that was it. I ran a business and I worked in the workshop and I helped tailors do their work. To begin with, you know, I was the undercutter, under our head cutter, John Kent. I would do all the striking, the trimming, the marking out. Occasionally I’d get involved with, you know, basting the odd collar here and there, but, you know, my job wasn’t, I wasn’t a Savile Row tailor. But I loved working in a workshop with these brilliant people, and I wanted to tell their story, and to give people also a flavour of actually what it feels like to be in a Savile Row workshop, to go through the process of learning it, and how it all works as an ecosystem, because it’s a very singular and quite unusual ecosystem. You know, you have cheek by jowl along one little street, you have about a dozen businesses that are all doing the same thing, that are all competing with one another for business, in a sense, but who all understand that the continuation of the community only will happen if we all succeed. We all train, we all…you know, without the kind of strength in numbers, and the numbers are quite small now compared to what they were a century ago, Savile Row would not survive. And so it is a completely unique community of craftspeople who all know one another extremely well. You know, we are popping in and outta one another’s shops all the time. The tailors, as I explained in the book, sewing tailors work for multiple houses. The cutters might train and work for a house for a decade and then they’ll go somewhere else for a decade. And so everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody’s business. And the cloth merchants spread the gossip between the houses on a daily basis. And everybody gets along in a way that is, I find it’s utterly charming and unique. And I felt like I wanted to tell that story as well.
So in the book, there are a number of chapters that I’ve written. I mean, I’ve written a tiny little foreword and then I’ve written, almost, the story of my personal experience, you know, quite short, but my time working on Savile Row, how I got, you know, how it was to start there. And then there’s this chapter about how it is to live amongst this ecosystem, how it all works, what the jobs are, what the trotters do, what the trimmers do, what the undercutters and the coatmakers and the coat finishers and all of those people, and how they all interact, which I hope is as interesting to people on the outside as it was to me when I came to it. And I think there’s a danger when you live inside and work inside a community like this. For so long, you become immune to the, to the absolute charm and, and, and idiosyncrasy of everything that goes on there. And so I wanted to make sure that I captured that. And then there is a little chapter that is the story of the proper houses on Savile Row as I see them. And then there’s a, there’s another story about how we came to have such an amazing cloth industry in, in the UK. You know, a sort of historical narrative from the beginning to now of what is one of Britain’s greatest industries and what in the past was an industry that employed a huge proportion of our population. So incredibly important to both our social and economic history. So there was all of that.
Then there was the technical manual. And the way I wanted to do the technical manual was very particular. So every tailor on Savile Row is taught by a master, and that master will have been taught by a master. And so there is a sort of lineage of craft that stretches back 700 years. But each branch of the tree will have diverged very slightly. And so amongst the community on Savile Row, there are, there are lots and lots of different ways of doing the various steps within the making process. And what I wanted to do was capture, in completeness, one person’s method. And so I chose three tailors who I’ve known pretty much all of my career on Savile Row. So Chris Ktori made the trousers for the first suit I ever had, and I’ve worked with Chris since the very first day I started on Savile Row. And Felicity, who is one of our waistcoat makers; she has been our waistcoat maker the whole time. You know, I, I, I didn’t meet her on day one, but you know, the first time we made a waistcoat, or I made a waistcoat, probably a month or two into my start, I worked with her. And then Rachel Smith came to us as an apprentice and, and completed her apprenticeship at Norton’s and worked for us as a coat maker and made lots of things for me as well as making lots of things for our, for our customers. And so these are people that I’ve both an enormous respect for and a great admiration for, but also a great deal of fondness for, personally. And I really wanted to celebrate them and to celebrate the particularity of the way that they do things.
And then Riki, who wrote the technical sections, was an amazing young cutter. So when you train to be a cutter on Savile Row, you first have to learn how to make. You don’t have to learn to make to the same standard as a trouser maker or a coat maker or a waistcoat maker, but you have to learn to make well enough so that, when you’re cutting and fitting, you understand how the whole thing goes together so that your cutting and fitting makes sense. So Riki had, through his apprenticeship, he won a thing called the Golden Shears, which is a competition run, I think, biannually, for young tailors. I was a judge on it one year. But he was a lovely young tailor, he trained at Gieves & Hawkes, and he had, I was looking for somebody to help me write the technical sections, because it’s quite a skill to write technical sewing instructions. It’s, it’s not my forte. I’m not really sure what my forte is, but writing technical instructions for sewing is probably not it. Definitely not it. But we actually started with somebody else, and this other person has written several sewing books, and I had worked with them before, and we signed a deal that they were going to write the technical bits. And after one day in the workshop with Chris, our trouser maker, they phoned me up and they said, “I don’t, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t understand, because there is so much that isn’t just ‘Take this piece and put it on that piece and sew it together.’ There is so much where, the little finger might be lifting and putting a little bit of tension on here while the other hand does something different.” She said, “I’m failing to get the nuance of what’s happening here.” And so I was in a slight panic because we’d already started writing the book. But luckily, somebody suggested Riki to me. In fact, Rachel suggested Riki to me. And we spoke and he said, “Well, I reckon I’ll give it a go, but I’m not sure I can do it.” But he actually did an incredible job doing it. And because he had been through it himself, he had enough understanding that when he didn’t quite follow something, he was able to say to Rachel or, or, or Chris or, or Felicity, “What is it that you’ve just done there? I’ve sort of missed that bit.” But he knew there was a bit there that he’d missed. He knew enough to know that he’d sort of missed a step. So he was actually, I think, the perfect person to write that. And then the illustrations were something else. I mean, the shirt section I wrote, because actually shirt making by, by contrast, is relatively easy. And the method I was shown to make shirts was actually very, very similar to Lizzie’s method. And so when I went to Emma Willis’s workshop, actually, you know, it also is a lot more, it’s more straightforward. You know, you are just putting pieces together and sewing them in the right order, in the right place. Whereas, you know, with, with tailoring, you are working and shaping and doing all of this additional stuff that is quite sort of mind boggling, I think, for, for maybe beginning sewers.
Caroline: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we love about this book is that you do go into so much technical detail. It’s not really dumbed down. There’s so much great information in there. And I was wondering if, for our listeners who don’t have the book in front of them and who maybe aren’t super familiar with the Savile Row suit and that process; on the podcast, when we say “tailoring,” we usually mean, like, that whole process of fitting, cutting, making a garment, but that’s not really how that term is used in Savile Row. So can you explain, just quickly, the difference between cutting and tailoring?
Patrick: Yes. So, in Savile Row, there are, two ways that you can build a career. Well, there are other ways, but in, on the making side, you have two routes. You can choose a tailoring route or you can choose a cutting route. And if you choose a tailoring route, you will learn either to make waistcoats, which is considered probably the simplest; to make trousers, which is a little more difficult; or to make coats, which is the most complicated and takes the longest amount of time. But those are all making jobs. So if you work in a workshop on Savile Row and you are a coat maker, somebody will put on your board, your workstation, a package of cut-up bits of cloth along with a bunch of trimmings: chest canvas, body canvas, collar canvas, a bit of domette, a bit of silesia, a bit of linen, buttonhole twist. That will arrive on your desk and you will take those pieces and you will sew them together. That is your job. You will first baste them together and then, later, once they’ve been fitted, you will properly sew them together. But you won’t do the final finishing because that is another person’s job. So you have a coat finisher and you have trouser finishers, who are different people from the people that assemble or tailor the jacket, or the coat, or the trousers. Waistcoat makers do the whole thing, but in trouser making and coat making, you don’t do your own finishing. So once you’ve made the coat, you pass it off to a finisher, and the finisher will edge stitch it, fell the linings, hand sew the buttonholes, but they won’t put the buttons on. That will then go back to somebody else to be done because that’s, that’s done back in the workshop. So that is the making route. So you can either be a coat maker, a trousers maker, or a waistcoat maker. You are a tailor.
The other route you can take is into cutting. And the cutter is the person who cuts the patterns and fits the customer. In some houses, smaller houses, the cutter will also measure and sell the customer his fabric or his suit. But cutting is considered by some to be more important, because without a good cutter you can’t get a good result. But really, without a good tailor you can’t get a good result. But the cutter is also in charge of the workshop as well. So, you know, the cutter is in charge of the overall suit or jacket or trousers or whatever it happens to be. So to be a cutter, as I said before, you would learn to make to a certain level and then you would learn to cut patterns. You would learn to cut patterns to begin with. Once you’ve learned to cut patterns, you would learn to fit. So you come into the, into the fitting room with your master, and you will be present while they fit. And then, eventually, you will learn to fit yourself and you will take over. And those are two very distinct routes.
The other difference between those two roles is that the cutter is employed directly by the tailoring house. So, you know, Martin, who is the head cutter at Norton & Sons, is employed by Norton & Sons, and he only works for Norton & Sons. But our sewing tailors, who might be in our workshop, are self-employed. So most of the sewing tailors within every workshop on Savile Row will work for at least two houses. So you might have walked into Norton & Sons and ordered a suit from us. And the coat might be made in our workshop, but the trousers might be made downstairs in Henry Poole’s workshop. You might go into Huntsman and order a suit from them. And the jacket might be sewn in our workshop by a different tailor. So it’s, the sewing tailors are freelance and always have been. And we have this amazing system, called the universal log system, that sets a minimum tariff for all of the making jobs. And it sets a minimum tariff for a single breasted jacket, a double breasted jacket, a double breasted jacket for a man that’s quite big, you know, a single breasted jacket for a man that’s quite big, which is extra. If they’ve got extra pockets, it’s this much more. If it’s an overcoat, then it’s even more again. If it’s a dinner jacket, if it’s got a shawl collar, all of these things are extras. If you’ve got a poacher’s pocket inside, if you’ve got bellows on the outside pocket, there’s a…so this, this, there’s this thing that’s agreed every year between the tailors’ unions and the association of the houses that sets this thing called the universal log rate. And that is the rate that the sewing tailors are paid. And it’s, it’s a standard across all of the houses on Savile Row. So those guys, it’s a brilliant system, because it means that if one house is quiet for whatever reason, you don’t ever have to hire or fire your tailoring staff. You, they, you know, if, if we’re busy, you know…Huntsman’s might be quiet. But Norton’s might be busy. So, you know, we would give work to the guys that are sitting in the Huntsman workshop And vice versa. And it’s always been that way and it works incredibly well. It sort of evens out the capacity between all the houses.
But all of the houses, all the proper houses, are all trained. So, you know, we’re training. At the moment we have one apprentice at Norton’s and and we almost always have had at least one apprentice in the workshop at any one time, because we all understand that you’ve got to, you know, you’ve got to keep this thing going. So, but yes, so there are two jobs. But also, you know, the cutter almost never does his own cutting out. So that is done by, by an undercutter, and cutting out is what we call striking. So when I worked, I worked for a guy called John Kent, an amazing, amazing cutter, had the, he had the Royal Warrant of the Duke of Edinburgh himself for years and years, made the Duke’s clothes forever, had an amazing history on Savile Row. John would cut the patterns, and then he would give the patterns to me, and then I would take the cloth and lay it out, smooth it out, chalk round it, cut it out, cut all the inlays, bundle it, trim it, so, you know, in the bigger houses there would be a separate trimmer, who’s the person who cuts all the canvases and bundles those up with the cloth before giving it to the tailor. But all of those, again, in the smaller houses, you know, you would have one undercutter maybe who does all of this stuff. You might have the apprentice doing it, But in the biggest houses you know, you’d have cutters, undercutters, you’d have strikers, you’d have trimmers, you know, you’d have all sorts of people in there. And even to the extent you might have people called trotters who would run the stuff backwards and forwards to the workshops that are on the other side of Regent Street. So yeah, it’s an amazing ecosystem of different, different jobs. And you pick a lane, you know, you pick a lane, you either become a tailor or you become a cutter and you almost never swap between the two once you’ve started down that route.
Helen: It’s so fascinating to get a peek behind the scenes of everything that’s going on in Savile Row, and what comes to mind for me is, I’m wondering about the pace of the work. Are people running around with patterns and fabric, and are they yelling? Is there tension between the cutters and the tailors, or is everything very slow-paced? Because obviously you’re doing this like really intricate, slow work. So it does take time.
Patrick: Well, the truth is the sum of all of that. There are definitely times when there are tensions between, between tailor and cutter. Particularly also because, you know, the, the cutters and tailors don’t always work at the same workshop. So in our workshop, there are times that when, as I say, you know, our tailors in our workshop will be sewing a job from a cutter in another house and they’ll be “effing” and “blinding: and “so and so” and “this sleeve doesn’t go in this arm hole” and “this is an absolute,” you know, “this and that.” So there are, you know, there’s, there’s plenty of that going on. They’re very, you know, they’ll be very quick to call out bad cutting. Likewise, you know, there are times when the cutters will be on the case of the tailors, very rarely because the work is bad, because they’re all brilliant, but actually, often just because they haven’t got something done on time; a customer will show up unexpectedly and, and, you know, and the job won’t be ready and then all hell will break loose. But I mean, it’s, it’s important, in terms of the time it takes to make, because the tailors are self-employed. Their time is their own and they will work at the pace that suits them. So what is really really important is that every tailor is afforded the time to do their work to the absolute peak of their skill. You know, there is never anything that is done on Savile Row that in any way hinders the ability of the craftspeople to do their job properly. And I think that’s fundamentally important to the way that we work. It means that every single job is done to the most extraordinary standard. Or to the absolute pinnacle of the, you know, the standard that a, that an individual tailor or cutter can do it to.
And that is really important because I think there are so many jobs today where people are frustrated because they would like to do the job better, but because of time pressure or money pressure, they are prevented from doing the job to the standard they would like to do it. And that, of course, makes them frustrated and unhappy. And I think what’s lovely about the way we do it is that everybody has the opportunity to work to the absolute best of their ability. And it’s also fun work. I mean, they are so good. I mean, this is mesmerizing. I wish you could, you know…sitting, occasionally, you know, I’ll be sitting, having my lunch, you know, I’ll be eating a sandwich off the sewing machine at the back with a cup of tea, and you’re just watching somebody pad a canvas on the chest of a coat. And just the rhythm, the speed, and the accuracy with which they’re sewing, you know…they are picking up one tiny thread on the cloth underneath the canvas as they’re sewing it, But they’re sewing it with such speed. It’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch. And as I say, it, for me, it was such a privilege to be part of that world and to be able to spend time in it. And there is sort of rivalry amongst them, you know, there are certain tailors who think they’re the best coatmaker on the street and, you know, and I can think of two or three that in the 20 years I’ve been there,
you know, have very much reckoned themselves to be the, best on the, on the street. And, you know, there are great ones and there are good ones, but you know, they’re all very, very good. And there’s some great characters and there’s great games that are played in the workshop and everybody talks, you know, most of the tailors are so good that they can talk and sew without any interruption to either. And you know, it just makes for this really convivial and very pleasant place to, to work. And I actually, you know, oftentimes I, I, I miss, I miss the time kind of working in that workshop. So yeah, it’s, it’s a very special place.
Caroline: How long does this process take from start to finish? Like if I were to walk in with my husband and order a suit tomorrow, when could he get that finished suit?
Patrick: Well, I mean, it depends on whether he is an existing customer or a new customer. If he’s a new customer, obviously we have to start by measuring him and taking his figuration. So, you know, we don’t just measure, we also look at a figure of somebody. And you know, you can run a tape around somebody’s chest and measure 42 inches. But those chests could be completely different. You know, somebody could be huge in the front and skinny at the back. They could be broad and flat. They could be completely round. And so, just taking a measurement of somebody’s chest doesn’t give you a chance to make them a coat that fits them very well. So we take a lot of measurements, but we also take, you know, we have this shorthand system for recording people’s figure. And some of it is sort of code for things that you wouldn’t want to say in front of them, because quite often, the cutter or the undercutter, whoever is measuring, sometimes the salesperson will be measuring, somebody else will be writing down. So you’ll have things like “RB”, or “SB,” or “SBL,” or, you know, “SBL” being “slight bandy legs.” And, you know, this sort of uh, “HB”, which would be “hunched back.” And, you know, even the, even the position of your, your head versus your shoulders. So you can be “head forward” or “head back.” You know, we, we record all of that because that makes a difference to the way something’s going to fit.
And so, that process, you know, you, you, you come in and you probably spend an hour in the shop choosing a fabric and going through the detail. I mean, Some customers are brilliant at making a selection, some are less brilliant, and some are downright awful. And, you know, sometimes you’ll spend an hour and a half, two hours with somebody who stares at, you know, the same two blue cloths for like an hour and a half. And then it’d be like, “Oh, I’m going to come back tomorrow.” And then you come back and he brings, bring his friend or he brings his wife or girlfriend. And then you’ve got people that come in and spend three and a half minutes and go, “Yep, that’s the one. Crack on.” So you, you do that, but then you choose, I mean, the ditherers, you know, then you, then you’ve got to choose a lining and then you, I mean, it’s a process, but you, you learn how to manage these people in a polite but firm way. It’s like, it’s, it’s only two shades of blue that are about a nano, a nano wavelength off each other. You know, they’ll both be great. Just, you know, give yourself a break. So then the cutter will cut a pattern and it will normally take him a, you know, an hour or so to cut a pattern. They cut a pattern from scratch, from the measurements. Then we work out how much fabric we need. So we call, you know, and then we ring the cloth merchant and say, right, we need 3.4 meters of this. Or if it’s a check, it’s more, and if it’s a big check, it’s even more. And then, usually the following day, the cloth will arrive. And if you’re, you know, if the workshop is running properly that day, it’ll be chopped out, it’ll be struck, it’ll be trimmed, and it’ll go to the tailor. And then usually the tailor won’t, you know, won’t crack onto it straight away. But usually if the, again, the workshop is in balance and everything’s working well, within a week to 10 days, maybe a fortnight, that first fitting will be ready. So you get, you know, you loosely assemble it, you’ve powered the canvases in. You don’t put a top collar on it, no pockets, no nothing. It’s all just, the sleeves are basted in.
And you phone the customer and you say, “Right, we’re ready for a fitting.” Now, at this point, it’s entirely up to the customer whether they pop in that day or the following day or whether they don’t come for six months. So, you know, as long as the customer comes in, we would fit them. We then completely take the suit apart again or the jacket or the trousers. We completely rip it down. Smooth it flat again. We re mark it, re-cut it, and then it goes back to the tailor, usually to be re-basted. Second baste, sometimes you’ll put a top collar on it. It’s a little easier for the customer to see how it looks if there’s a top collar on. But you do that normally a couple of times on the first suit. And then you would go to a forward finish and then, finally, once it’s all done, you’ll cut the buttonholes and sew it out completely. So it normally requires four visits for a for a new customer and that might take, on average, two to three months. Again, sometimes it takes six months, because the client is always traveling or it might be a client from overseas who doesn’t come to London very often. But, you know, normally, normally, we can normally do it 10 to 12 weeks, something like that.
Caroline: Incredible.
Patrick: But if you’ve already got a pattern and the pattern is a good pattern, and we’ve made making things for you regularly, you can ring us up and say, “Right, I need a pair of grey flannel trousers.” I can show you a picture of it on my phone and you’ll go, “Yup.” And we can get it in, chop it out, straight finish it. So we don’t, we wouldn’t do any fittings. And we can probably get it done in three or four days. So it really, really depends. It, you know, I, I haven’t had a fitting on a pair of trousers in 15 years because I know my trouser pattern is absolutely spot-on. But sometimes you don’t see a customer for 10 years, and so you’d always have to do a check on something like that. But you know, it’s not quick, but if you come in and you tell us that you’ve been invited to some white tie event on Friday and it’s Monday and you’re an existing customer, we can probably sort you out.
Helen: Ooh. And I know you get to work with all sorts of amazing people and celebrities. And there’s so many great stories in your book, as well, to read. But one of the things that strikes me, listening to you talk about this process, is just that it’s in such stark contrast to how we acquire clothes these days, and fast fashion. And I know that you’re a big advocate of sustainability. And you have a sustainable ready-to-wear brand called Community Clothing. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about that?
Patrick: Yes. No, you’re absolutely right. I think what is really interesting about the way that a business like Norton & Sons or any of the bespoke tailors work is that it is actually a really, really good way to have clothes made if you want to live in a sustainable, low-impact kind of way. We only make the clothes that are needed. You know, every piece of clothing that our customers order from us is something they have thought about really carefully. You know, you don’t go in and spend 6,000 quid on a suit without thinking about whether you’re going to wear it. So every purchase is incredibly considered. And because of the process that you have to go through, selecting the fabric, choosing all the details, having the clothes made and fitted, you have a real connection with that garment. And, of course, we use the best materials on the planet and we sew things in a way that means that they can be repaired. And we do repair our clothes for life, you know. You pay for it, but we will look after your piece of clothing and we will try and extend its life absolutely as far as it is possible to make it go. And we will never try and convince you to buy a new one when you don’t need it. And, you know, we don’t have new collections every season. Also largely sewn by hand. So almost the, you know, the tiniest carbon footprint. So actually, in terms of the way the world of clothing works, it’s a beautiful solution. Just that it’s kind of eye-wateringly expensive. So that whole philosophy is very much the philosophy that we take to Community Clothing.
Community Clothing, I started in 2016. It was set up to try and do two things. Firstly, to make really good quality clothes affordable to most people, but also, secondly, to sustain and create jobs in our textile industry here in the UK. And both of those things are really important to me, but, you know, the philosophy behind Community Clothing is very much the same as that at Norton’s. We don’t want people to be artificially churning through their clothes. We want to make beautiful clothes that you feel connected to because you know where they’re made and what they’re made from. We want to make clothes that you enjoy wearing for a very, very long time. Clothes that are worth repairing. Clothes that will get better with age. And we want to make them in a way that the people who make them are well paid and enjoy their work and are proud to do the things they do.
And Community Clothing has been extraordinarily successful over the last four or five years. You know, we’ve built a good business. I mean, we’re in Britain, you know, by American standards, probably very small. But we count the number of hours of work we create. So far, we’ve created close to 400,000 hours of work here in the UK, which is a pretty amazing number. And the clothes we make, I’m wearing them all today, are amazing quality. And if you were to buy the clothes that we sell from any normal premium clothing brand, they would cost you at least three times as much. So our business model is built around all sorts of things that take out all the cost of normal business in the clothing industry. We give the money to the makers. So normal clothing, if you spend a pound, about 25p or less goes to the people who’ve made that clothing. So that 25p Is the people who grow the fiber, the spinners, the dyers, the weavers or the textile knitters, the garment sewers or knitters, all of those people between them get less than 25% of the price of the clothing you make. And that, to me, feels wrong. In our model, the people who make the clothes get 65p in the pound. And we, as a brand, take a little tiny slice. We’ve also, in this country, we have VAT. So, you know, 20p goes to the tax man in either case. But in our model, we are giving, basically we’re saying that the way that clothing should be made, and sold, should reward the people that make it, not the influencers, the marketers, the people organizing the parties, the people getting free stuff, all that stuff. Those people can swim. The way that this has to work is that the people who make it get the most money, and the people who buy it get a really, really good product that lasts a long time, that is worth fixing, that’s worth selling secondhand, that is going to give them a long and enjoyable relationship with this piece of clothing, because it’s been beautifully made by people who care about making things well.
Helen: I mean, your passion and appreciation for the craftspeople involved in every step of the process really comes across. And I’m sure it’s something that our listeners can relate to as sewists. Of course, we know all of the hard work that goes into creating a garment from start to finish and can truly appreciate that process. So it’s really cool to hear what you’re doing with Community Clothing. And you had another book come out this year called Less. I mean, how many books are you planning to write this year, Patrick?
Patrick: Well, no more, is the answer to that. But yeah, I wrote, I actually wrote them both…well, I finished Less this year. I wrote Savile Row Suit last year. I actually finished writing Savile Row Suit like halfway through recording Sewing Bee. And then I started writing Less in earnest as soon as I finished writing that one. So I, I was writing books for a long time and it was, you know, getting up really early in the morning before I started work, writing, coming home from work, writing, writing all Saturday, writing all Sunday. You know, filming Sewing Bee; we’ll do a challenge and it’s back to Esme and I’s dressing room and I’m typing on my thing and she’s, you know, asleep with a, you know, doily on her head or whatever. But yeah, I’m so happy, because both have turned out. And just, you know, you hope when you start doing something like this that the result will be brilliant. And I’m so pleased that you like the way that Savile Row Suit looks, because it’s the second book that I’ve done with Gestalten, and the reason I chose to do it with with them was because I knew they would make a beautiful book and they would take the time to make it look wonderful and be something that people can treasure. And it’s very different from Less, which is all about the writing, and I’m super pleased to say that it’s selling very well. I made the Sunday Times bestseller list. And, and I’ve had such an extraordinary amount of incredible comments from people about Less. It’s been so heartwarming and I’ve, I mean, I get letters through the post from people who say that, you know, I’ve articulated so many things that they’ve been feeling themselves and it’s changed the way they think about all objects and their consumption and the way things should be made. And, you know, every day people are posting on social media a picture of the book and, you know, why they loved it. And. And honestly, the whole thing has been so, so heartwarming. I mean, I’ve really, really worked hard on both books.
And, but, Less is a, it is a plea for a change to the way we consume. And it is about trying to remind people that living with fewer, but better things can make us really happy. And not just make us happy in the ownership of these things, but as everybody who, who makes things, whether it’s clothes or furniture or pottery or anything knows, making something makes you feel good. And so in the past, in this country, over 35% of the country used to make things for a living. And that was, you know, whilst plenty of people would have, you know, grumbled…generally, they enjoyed the work and the work was good for them, both physically and mentally. It gave people purpose. It gave them a sense of pride. It bound communities together. It gave identity to places in a way that nothing else seems to have done in its wake. And the loss of all of those jobs, I think, is very hard felt. Right now, both of our countries are deeply divided. And you know, we have a large population of this country in, in the UK that feels deeply disenfranchised. And I think a large part of that is the loss of a sense that their life can have a meaning through doing work that is meaningful to them. And I think the loss of those jobs, those making jobs that were so important in large parts of our country, has contributed to the sense of unrest and, and despondency that is deeply felt by so many people. And I think that the way that our economy has moved to, you know, make it cheapest, sell the highest volume, is deeply depressing, and, and it needs to be reversed, and it can be reversed by us, as consumers, by choosing to buy things differently. Choose to buy things from somebody who makes something well, just choose to support businesses that make just one thing. You know, most of the things I own are made by people whose job it is just to do one thing. If they can’t do that one thing really well, they won’t survive. But they are, you know, they are committed to making extraordinary quality things because that’s what they’ve always done. And those, I think if we can go back to a society that values makers, values quality, and understands the importance of that to all of us as a society, I think we’d be much, much happier.
Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great takeaway from the book and all of the work that you do. And we’re really happy to hear that the book, Less, is doing well. So we want to encourage our listeners to go and check that out. I do want to switch gears for a minute before we wrap up, because I know that our listeners love The Great British Sewing Bee, and we just have to ask you a few questions about it. First of all, is being a Sewing Bee judge as much fun as it looks? Because it looks like so much fun.
Patrick: I mean honestly, I can’t believe I get paid for doing it. It, I shouldn’t say that, but it’s, it is the most fun thing I do all year. Because it is incredibly fun, but everybody that works on that show is so brilliantly professional. Everyone knows their jobs so well. We choose brilliant contestants every year. We set fun challenges, difficult challenges, but, you know, we try and intersperse the difficult challenges with challenges we know they’re going to really enjoy doing. And, you know, I’ve worked with Esme for…seven series with Esme. We’ve had the most brilliant presenters throughout. We’ve had amazing contestants. And it’s just really fun to be in the room and see them do what they love doing. And sometimes they struggle, and sometimes they make things that are hilariously bad, but very rarely, sadly. But they also continuously make things that really just inspire you and make you feel just great about being part of this whole world.
It’s funny, the atmosphere on the show has always been one of incredible positivity and celebration and support. There are so many shows on TV that seek to entertain, in inverted commas, by ridiculing people. And we, as a show, have always taken a completely different tack. We believe that, actually, what people want to see is a celebration of the love of making or the, you know, the, there are difficult times. And, you know, as a as a judge, I’ve always been very straight with the contestants, but in a way that isn’t trying to belittle people or undermine the effort, because we know how difficult all of this is. You know, we’ve made clothes, we know how tough it is to do this. So when things go wrong, we tell them because, you know, that’s the job, but we tell them in a way that’s like, you know, “That’s just, that’s just how it goes sometimes. Things go badly sometimes.” And as a result, I think we’ve created an atmosphere on The show that is quite unique to TV. And I think partly it’s, you know, it’s, it’s also down to the brilliance of the casting team, who find from the thousands and thousands of people who apply every year, find people who are not just technically good, not just creatively good, but also lovely people whose stories you want to hear. And you know, I don’t know, I don’t know how you guys watch it, because it’s officially not supposed to be out in America, but I’m sure you find a way, through various nefarious means.
Caroline: We won’t, we’ll never tell.
Patrick: Yes. What sort of piracy are you up to? But we, but I’m delighted that you do. I can’t, I don’t really know why the show doesn’t go out in America, because it goes out in Australia and New Zealand and Japan and, and, well, who knows? Who knows? It seems a real mystery to me.
Helen: Who knows? it’s everywhere!
Patrick: Yeah. But no, we love, we really love it. We love it. I mean, we’re, we’re just about to start, weirdly, what are we now? So in about three weeks time, we’re gonna film the Christmas special. And then just after that, we’re gonna start recording Series 11. We’ve done all the challenges. The challenges are all set. They’re being tested now. people ask about the challenges a lot. And actually, this year there was a lot of, “Ooh, these challenges are too hard,” or “People haven’t got enough time.” But you know, the way we set the challenges has always been the same. You know, we come up with an idea. We create a pattern, we create a set of instructions. One of the professionals in the team will go away and test it. And then we’ll all look at it, and then we’ll, you know, they’ll tell us how long it took them to make, And then we’ll go, “Ooh, that’s too long.” So we’ll take a few bits off, we’ll, you know, we’ll take the lining out, or we’ll remove the cuff buttons, or we’ll do a few bits just to kind of simplify it a little bit. And then we redo it, and then we give it to a team. We give it to a team, we have like a, a crack squad of former Sewing Bee contestants whose job it is to test these things. And they’re not all, you know, series winners. So we give it to people who’ve gone out in early rounds, middle rounds and, you know, and later stage, and they go away and test it.
So we know all of these challenges are doable, but you know, sometimes we get contestants who like to talk a bit or take a long time to wander around the haberdashery and just kind of, you know, they think they’re out shopping at Liberty’s, but they’re, they’re not. They’re in, you know, the clock is ticking. And, but also sometimes, you know, this season for example, I dunno if you guys have managed to catch series 10, but you know, some of the contestants this year are really quite novice. Some of them have only been sewing for a few years. And so they just haven’t the experience of working with patterns and pattern instructions. And so, some of them struggled. But, on the flip side, their creativity was like nothing else we’ve ever seen before. So we’ve had contestants who are brilliant at everything, but most of them will have something they’re stronger at than others, and every year we, we go, “We can’t possibly come up with another 30 challenges.” And then every year we do, and we think, you know, “Wow, these are even better than the ones we had last year.” So yeah, we’re really, we’re getting ready. I haven’t met the contestants yet. I haven’t seen their bios. But apparently they are amazing. I, again, I get really excited because, you know, we get to hang out with these guys for, you know, for 20-odd days and see what they’re going through, see what they make and talk about what they make and give them a bit of a hug occasionally when things go badly and laugh about it. But it really, I mean, it’s genuinely an absolute joy to do.
Helen: Your excitement and your love for it really comes across, and I think you’re an excellent judge. You deliver criticism really well, and both you and Esme are very positive with the contestants, and I think that’s part of the reason why the show has been so successful. It’s very relatable for home sewists, I feel like. Everyone could imagine themselves on the show making the projects and watching things go wrong. I mean, that’s a huge part of the sewing process. Things go wrong for us all the time. So nobody wants to watch somebody do something effortlessly every time, right?
Patrick: Well, it rarely happens. So you’re all in luck. But I mean, sometimes it goes spectacularly wrong. I mean, there are a few times when things have gone really badly awry. But, but yeah, no, no, you’re absolutely right. But then the other thing, of course, you know, in the real world, you’d just unpick it and have a cup of tea and sit and have a deep breath and then do it again. But sadly, we, you know, we also, you know, we’re making a TV show and we can’t spend three days making a shirt. We’ve got three challenges to fit into two days and we’ve got to crack on. So, but you know, that is the, that is the joy of it and sometimes the downside of it, that we’ve got to keep moving along. And it is a competition. So, you know, if everybody did everything brilliantly, it would be really, really hard for us to separate them. And sometimes it’s really hard for us to separate them anyway. I mean, like the semi-final a couple of years ago, we genuinely couldn’t decide which of the four should miss out on the final. And so, in the end, we called the BBC and said, “Can we have them all in the final?” And happily, they said yes.
Helen: Oh, that’s wonderful. I mean, one of the things that strikes me after our whole conversation is your work in custom tailoring, making these bespoke suits at this high end, you know, the peak performance of these craftspeople, and then spending a lot of time with home sewists, also celebrating their skills and projects and achievements as well. And we were wondering if you had any advice for home sewists who want to take their sewing to the next level, maybe want to gain some of those skills of the folks on Savile Row.
Patrick: It’s very hard to get to, to really get the skill that you would, you would learn on Savile Row without putting the time in and having the direct mentorship. So I think you have to find a good tutor. You have to find a good tutor and you have to put the time in because do not forget that, you know, if you are going to learn to be a coatmaker on Savile Row, you are going to spend 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for four years doing that. You are going to spend six months putting collars on. You’re going to spend six months doing sleeves. You know, it is a painstaking process. You have to put the time in. But you need to have a patient and skilled tutor who can guide you through the process. That, really, I think, is the only way. I mean, you can buy my excellent book, but you will probably still, you know, and I, and I hope it is, it is followable because if you’ve got the basics, I think you can certainly work your way through it. And it might be that you have to kind of do it a couple of times. But I think, you know, the great thing about the world we live in now is that there are wonderful experts online who will gladly share their experience. There are lots of people who are, who think they’re experts who will gladly share misinformation online, so you do have to take things with a pinch of salt. But here in the UK, sewing classes are popping up all over the place. Sewing schools are reopening, you know, the courses that are being offered are increasingly sophisticated. There are more and more great people teaching. And, I think, most big cities will have lots of great options if you want to learn. So I think that is the way, you know, you’ve got to find somebody good to help you through. You’ve just got to put the time in. You’ve got to, also, don’t forget, not, I mean, we know, you know, not everybody who comes to Savile Row to do an apprenticeship will succeed. There is a level of manual dexterity that is required that just not everybody has. So don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do things as well as some people. Firstly, some people will have spent a lifetime learning it, but also just, you know, we’re all, we’re all different. We all have different things that we’re good at. Not everybody can be brilliant at everything.
Caroline: Mmhmm.
Helen: Mmhmm. And that’s why people specialize.
Patrick: Yeah.
Helen: I do think your book is very approachable. I loved all the technical illustration and information. And even if I wasn’t going to sew along with it and maybe make my own pair of bespoke trousers, just reading it was a pure joy from a sewist’s perspective, because I love everything sewing. And if I can’t be sewing, I want to be listening to people talk about sewing or reading about sewing.
Caroline: Or watching sewing…
Helen: Or watching sewing, exactly. So, such a great book. We encourage our listeners to go get a copy, The Savile Row Suit, and also your other book, Less, sounds very interesting. I’m definitely going to be reading that one next. Patrick, where can our listeners find you online?
Patrick: I mean, you can follow me personally through my Instagram. I am @patrickgrantism on Instagram. Community Clothing is also online. And obviously, if you want to get sort of regular stuff from me, I write a weekly newsletter for Community Clothing and a monthly newsletter for Community Clothing which goes out with our parts… so we change our newsletter, we do a print newsletter. If you buy anything from us, you get that month’s newsletter in your package. We do actually ship to the US. We don’t ship to Canada at the moment; we only started shipping to the US relatively recently, and just because a few people were asking. And I’ve worked in the US for ages, and some of the things that we sell through Community Clothing were things that I sold when I did e-torts before. But yeah, you can, you can, our newsletters are kind of fun and they’re mostly, you know, they’re mostly, we try and talk about the world that we, we work in, which is the world of manufacturing beautiful clothes, manufacturing lovely textiles. Also, some of the stories and the interesting bits and pieces, you know, we did a piece last week about the Paris Olympics because the Paris Olympics before this one was 1924, which, of course, was the, the, the Olympics that spawned the great Chariots of Fire, which if you are a clothes lover, you have to watch, because the costumes in that film are extraordinary. But that Olympics, you know, every, the clothing worn by the, the athletes in that Olympics were so different to the clothing worn by the athletes in the Olympics today. And so, you know, that was what we wrote the newsletter about. We make sportswear that has no plastic in it at all. So we do a completely natural, organic sportswear collection, which is exactly what the athletes in ‘24 were wearing, whereas today’s athletes wear 100% synthetic, 100% oil based. But also, you know, there are so many, so, that’s what, you know, we will, we will write you little stories that, you know, when there’s something interesting to say, I’ll write a little thing about it, and that goes out in the Community Clothing newsletter. But that’s it. You know, I mean, I occasionally say things on Twitter, but not very often. @paddy Grant on Twitter/X. I did record the audiobook of Less. I don’t think we’re on sale in physical copy anywhere other than the UK just yet. We’re only out in hardback in the UK. But you can listen to me read the whole, almost 12 hours of it.
Helen: I would love that.
Caroline: That sounds wonderful.
Patrick: So if you’re not already bored of my voice, you could put yourself to sleep for weeks on end with me rattling on in your ear hole. So there you are. There’s a treat for all of you.
Caroline: Oh wonderful, we will link everything up in the show notes. Thank you so much, Patrick, for joining us today. It was such a great convo.
Patrick: My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you both.
Caroline: Okay, bye!
Helen: You too. Take care. Bye.
Caroline: That’s it for today’s episode of Love to Sew. You can find me, Caroline, at Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns, and Helen at Helen’s Closet Patterns and Cedar Quilt Co. We’re recording in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.
Helen: You can support Love to Sew and get access to bonus content by subscribing on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. You even get access to the back catalog of bonus episodes. That’s over 75 hours of Love to Sew! Go to patreon.com/lovetosew or check out our podcast page on Apple Podcasts for more info.
Caroline: You can head to lovetosewpodcast.com to find our show notes. They’re filled with links and pictures from this episode. And if you’d like to get in touch with us, leave us a message at 1-844-SEW-WHAT. That’s 1-844-739-9428. Or send us an email at hello@lovetosewpodcast.com.
Helen: Thanks to our amazing podcast team. Lisa Ruiz is our creative assistant and Jordan Moore of The Pod Cabin is our editor. And thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.
Caroline: Buh-bye!
Helen: Bye.
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