16/09/2022
For the first episode of season 5, and the milestone 100th episode, my guest is Aoife Long, a slow fashion writer from Ireland. Aoife is dedicated to seeking out the stories and craftspeople of her country, putting the spotlight on mainly small, independent makers with a conscious approach to their surroundings and what they produce. We get into the situation…
17/12/2021
Today Norwegian journalist and sustainable fashion advocate Tone Skårdal Tobiasson guests the pod to talk about wool, other fibres, the issue at hand and the initiatives pointing forward. Tone’s career has seen her quite dramatically change sides of the fashion table, going from being a fashion magazine editor to being one of the countries most vocal critics of the industry.…
17/09/2021
After a long career in textile design and fabrication, Sam Goates set up shop as a solitary weaver in the port of Buckie in the North of Scotland. Bringing a down at heel bitsa this, bitsa that Hattersley single-width loom back to life to weave custom cloths for discerning customers worldwide. We talk about Sam’s time in Australia, how she…
03/02/2021
This weeks episode is all about Harris Tweed, a legend among cloths and arguably the most socially significant of fabrics. My guests this week are Lorna Macaulay and Rebecca Hutton from the Hebridean Islands. Lorna is CEO of the Harris Tweed Authority, promoters and protectors of the tweed, and Rebecca Hutton, an independent single-width weaver at Taobhtuath Tweeds. We talk…
01/08/2020
Yesterday I bought a pair of socks in a fast-fashion outlet. They caught my eye, and as a teen of the formative years of computing, it was hard to resist the lure of the Pac-Man design. The original school of video games, all innovation in graphics and gameplay, eeking every cycle of computing power out of the chips and the…
15/09/2018
There’s a couple of reasons people are put off buying vintage garments, be they wool or otherwise. Smell and moth-holes. Both are kind of instant an instant turnoff. The smell we know as “le vintage”, the reek of a thousand army surplus garments that have been in a dank basement since D-day. And then that great wool greatcoat, all brass buttons,…
20/11/2016
I realise I’m going out on a limb here, stating the unutterable, voicing the opinion that dare not be muttered, yet standing up for the freezing man in face of popular opinion. You just know I’m about to go off all half-cocked now, right? So, knitted wool hats. What a load of crap! Apart from hiding your bad hair day, what have…
22/10/2016
Ley Clothing is Ollie. Just Ollie, operating out of the spare room in his flat, self-taught and dedicated to his art. He first came to my attention when I noticed the shirts he was showing on Instagram. In a fantastic looking brown deadstock vintage corduroy. I’m not sure which of those hashtaggable words it was that caught my attention, but…
06/12/2015
I’m always looking for things that have that added ingredient of different, be it a vintage car, a strange back-street caffe, or another jacket for the collection. Realm & Empire have been mentioned here a few times before, as one of a handful of British companies worth keeping an eye on. By some incredibly fortuitous dealings, R&E have managed to…
01/12/2015
When it comes to duffle coats Gloverall is where it to most intents and purposes started. No, Gloverall didn’t invent them, far from it, but when the British armed forces decided they had more than they could possibly use, what with it being peacetime and all, it was Gloverall that brought them to the public. And when the surplus duffles ran…