Season 5 - Style DNA: Patrick Grant

In this episode, I go on a sartorial journey with designer, businessman, author, and TV presenter Patrick Grant. Perhaps best known for his role in the TV show “The Great British Sewing Bee,” Grant is a man who 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. Patrick Grant has an engineering background and he has applied this knowledge to his fashion journey. I find myself going down a rabbit hole with Grant on the provenance of our clothes… on elastane and polymers and microplastics. We travel on with his journey of rebuilding the Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons and then on to 2015 when he bought the ailing Blackburn clothing manufacturer Cookson & Clegg, saving the factory from closure and the potential loss of all the skills of the team, not to mention their jobs. Grant has a passion for skilled British craftsmanship and in 2016 he created his campaigning clothes brand Community Clothing, which supports local clothing and textile manufacturers across the UK… just brilliant. As you can probably tell by now, Grant is a man on a mission. His recently launched book “Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier” makes for pretty sobering reading. As he says, “We used to care a lot about our clothes. We didn’t have many but those we had were important to us. We’d cherish them, repair them, and pass them on. And making them provided fulfilling work for millions of skilled people locally.” This is something we have totally lost sight of in our quest for more and cheaper… a fast fashion dopamine hit. He goes on to say, “Today the average person has nearly five times as many clothes as they did just 50 years ago. Last year, 100 billion garments were produced worldwide, most made from oil, 30% of which were not even sold, and the equivalent of one bin lorry full of clothing is dumped in landfill or burned every single second. Our wardrobes are full to bursting with clothes we never wear so why do we keep buying more?” On a lighter note, we touch on some of his worst fashion moments… probably in the 80s, living in San Francisco… but, he was wearing a sarong before David Beckham famously did! Patrick is a fabulously knowledgeable guest, and he really gets you thinking about the beauty and importance of just having LESS. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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