I have this receipt hanging up in a frame in my dad’s study. It’s creased and yellowing with age; it’s from a Manchester menswear tailor where my grandad bought his first suit in 1952. “Made in England” is stamped proudly at the bottom. He shows it to me whenever he’s feeling especially jingoistic about how things used to be; back in his day, everything was Made in Blighty and built to last.
Admittedly, I love my old man, but he does like to gloss over details like The Power Outages and The Three-Day Work Week. But he isn’t totally wrong. “Made in Britain” used to be simpler. If your jacket said it was Made in Britain, it was cut and sewn in Savile Row.
If your shoes were British, they were lasted in Northampton. If your jumper was British, it was knitted in the Scottish Borders.
Now?
Now that label sits in a legal and moral haze more polluted than the Manchester Ship Canal. Around three years ago, it dawned on me. I was researching an article about British-made knitwear.
I went to visit a factory in the Midlands that had been producing jumpers since the 18OOs. Stunning factory. Stunning products.
The factory manager – a proper old-school bloke called Terry who’d worked there since the 70s – was showing me around when I noticed a stack of labels on a bench, waiting to be sewn into garments. Made in Britain, they proudly declared, in crisp blue letters. “So you guys make everything here, from start to finish?” I said, whipping out my notebook to jot down an incongruously floral paragraph about tradition blah blah blah. Terry raised an eyebrow. “No, the yarn comes from Italy.
We get it dyed in Portugal. Then these guys over here stitch the panels up,” he said, waving at a room full of Chinese machine-knitters. “And then we finish them here.” “And that’s considered British made?” I sputtered. Some kind of adult variant of finding out about Father Christmas had just been delivered to myopic eyes. “Yeah.” Terry shrugged. “That’s what the law says, anyway.
Last substantial change or whatever.” From that moment on, I started paying attention to “British made” labels. If you’ve ever tried to work out what it really means that something was Made in Britain in 20I4, you’ll know it’s complicated. Legally speaking (bearing in mind I am not a lawyer, this is just based on talks with manufacturers and industrial lawyers), for a brand to be able to put “Made in Britain” on their products, it must have undergone its “last substantial transformation” in the UK.
But that doesn’t mean it was actually made here. It could’ve been cut and stitched nearly completed before being shipped to the UK for those final stages. A shoe could be imported as a flat sole before being attached to a British-made upper.
Legally speaking, it’s not bullshit. But it sure as hell isn’t what most people imagine when they drop an extra tenner on that Union Jack-emblazoned jumper. The thing is, what brands choose to class as “British made” sits on many levels: the genuine article, and what I’ll politely refer to as “British-ish”.
And caring about where your stuff comes from isn’t just for the laundry-list paranoid. If you want to genuinely support homegrown manufacturing or, y’know, just know what you’re actually paying for, these are the levels you need to know. At the top of the spectrum are brands that really do do it all.
Raw materials to finished product, start to finish; it’s all undertaken within the borders of these rainy isles. They tend to be pricey as hell as a result. Take Private White V.C. in Manchester.
Their cloth is woven within 30 miles of their factory, and they literally make everything in-house. Hiut Denim make genuine start-to-finish jeans in Wales. There’s a select few shoemakers in Northampton still using locally sourced leather and completing the entire process in-country.
I went down to Crockett & Jones ’ factory last winter to write about their Made in Britain collections. I sat and watched a SINGLE PAIR of shoes go through OVER 200 operations – all of which were undertaken by people working within the same Victorian factory that’s been crafting shoes since 1879. Granted, the leather was imported from a tannery in Europe (they were completely upfront about this), but that was pretty much the ONLY part of the process that wasn’t made in Northampton.
You’re paying for that when you spend £450 on a pair of their oxford shoes. It ain’t cheap, but you know exactly where your money’s going. Then you have the “mostly made in Britain” category.
In these instances, the majority of the garment or accessory is constructed here in Britain, but components or processes are dotted around the world for various reasons. Maybe a jacket is cut and sewn in London but made with fabric from Italy. Maybe a bag is produced in a workshop in Scotland using leather from a niche tannery in Belgium.
You get the idea. This makes up the vast majority of higher-end, genuinely British brands. For want of a better phrase, it’s acceptable.
Some materials can’t be sourced here anymore, so insisting they’re somehow magically British is silly. ASSEMBLED IN BRITAIN is where things get dodgy. Legally speaking, if major components of a product are made elsewhere but then “assembled” here, they can still put a Union Jack badge and “Made in Britain” stitching on their garments.
They are 100% correct. But it also feels like cheating. It’s kinda like saying you “made dinner” when you’ve just shoved some sauce on a microwave meal.
Then you have what I like to call “British finishing”. In these instances, a product is essentially finished being made before it comes to Britain; it might have its final bits stitched on or go through a British washing process to legally label it as Made in Britain. It’s not illegal, but it scrapes ethical when brands lean heavily into its “Britishness” through marketing whilst turning a blind eye to where their products are actually made.
I’ve grilled brands on this process over the years. You get all kinds of reactions. Some get angrily defensive (“It’s not illegal!”).
Others apologetically honest (“We’d love to make everything in Britain but just can’t find the expertise”). One menswear brand blocked me on Instagram a few years back after I asked them about it in a column. Their owner told me to “get out of the real world and live in mine”.
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The issue with vague and purposely misleading standards is that they undercut the brands doing things properly. When you’ve got a genuinely Made in Britain brand sat next to one that just adds the final stitches here on a shop floor, yet both brandish a Made in Britain badge, the latter is going to win. They can’t offer the same price points as a brand that offshores much of the labour-intensive work, but they reap all the benefits of marketing themselves as “Made in Britain”.
Tailoring is a massive one for me. There’s been a huge resurgence of interest in British bespoke and made-to-measure suits in recent years. But what constitutes “British tailoring” is getting muddied.
I’ve lost count of the amount of brands I’ve seen advertising suits as British-made that were cut and constructed completely in Asia, before getting flown to London for a final pressing and “finish”. Footwear is another sector that suffers. “Northampton-made” is the gold standard for any footwear brand. But a surprising amount of brands have just a studio or two over there these days.
Enough to put the “Made in Northampton” label on their shoes, but not enough to actually do all the work there. I could name names. I really could.
But someone KEEP THOSE LIBEL PAYMENTS COMING OVER AT LAWYERS UPDATE ON.) Suffice to say, if you’re paying Northampton prices, ask questions. Jumper-wise? Don’t get me started.
Britain has a bloody DIAMOND legacy when it comes to knitwear. From the incredible craftsmanship of Fair Isle to the durable argyle of traditional fishermen’s jumper. Yet now “artisanal” British knitwear brands will design and market a jumper that’s made entirely overseas.
It’s a vicious cycle – our manufacturing base has been stripped for so long that no one actually has the skills anymore. So where does that leave you as a consumer? Well, first off, be wary of woolly language. “British design.” “British brand.” “British heritage”.
All utter hogwash when it comes to where something is actually made. Fuck sake, even “Made in England” isn’t safe these days. Ask where what parts were made where.
The brands that 100% do it right will advertise it. They’ll happily tell you where something was stitched together, by who, and show you photos and videos of the process if they think you’re interested. They know they’re doing something special; actual manufacturing in this country isn’t easy or cheap.
They want you to know that’s why their prices reflect it. Guilty shout out here: price is something I think we often ignore. Genuine, authentic British manufacturing can’t happen under a certain price point.
Fact. Labour costs, rules around worker’s rights… the list goes on. If you see a “British-made” shirt for £50, physics tells us something isn’t adding up.
A lot of the best manufacturers in Britain are part of certifying bodies now. Things like “Made in Britain” (the actual organisation, not just the bullshit label they let everyone use) and “Heritage Crafts” are both fantastic sets of standards that are MUCH stricter than what you need to do legally. If you’re serious about buying British, look out for these seals of approval.
The best test? If you can, visit the factories yourself. Some of the best British manufacturers in the country actually let you visit their production lines.
I’ve toured woollen mills in Wales, knitware factories in Scotland, and shoe workshops all over England. It’s honestly the best day out. Plus, there’s nothing quite like building brand loyalty by seeing a group of lovely people make your stuff in person.
Am I saying brands need to cut themselves off from the rest of the world to qualify for that nice, shiny “Made in Britain” label? No fucking way. Global supply chains exist for a reason.
There’s nothing wrong with a jacket stitched together from British and international efforts. What I WILL object to is brands who creatively dodge the rules to make you THINK something’s more British than it really is. The irony is British manufacturing is having something of a revival.
Fast fashion fucked us over so badly over the last decade that people are now championing brands that are transparent, proud of where they’re made, and will actually tell you. The old guard who kept their manufacturing in Britain through the dark ages are finding new life. The Northampton shoe companies who stubbornly refused to offshore in the 00s and 10s thought everyone laughed at now charge prices that would’ve been unthinkable two decades ago.
Loads of new, small- batch manufacturers are popping up who are using age-old skills but with modern business models. British leather workers in East London. A knitwear co-operative in Glasgow.
Artisanal denim stitchers in Bristol.
They’re not manufacturing the way my grandad’s Old Thompson over there did. They’re trailblazing a new, ethical and sustainable path for the modern era; and they’re upfront about the pricing and processes involved.
My dad’s still convinced everything was better back then. And he’s got that receipt tacked to his wall to try and prove it. But I reckon the future of Made in Britain isn’t about rose-tinted nostalgia.
It’s about being honest. Brands will survive by telling you, the consumer, exactly what “British made” means in their instance. And if that’s “assembled in Northampton” or “finished with British wool” or even “designed by me on my shitty laptop in Leeds”, then consumers will know.
At the end of the day, I still have that jumper from Terry’s factory. And despite my repeated abuse of洗濯表示,I treat it like a motherfucking grenade whenever I wash it, that jumper has survived THREE FUCKING YEARS. Maybe there is something to be said for that final British process after all – even if it’s journey began half a world away.
