'Yorkshire mills aren't dusty old places - they are the future of fashion'

“When we walk around Yorkshire, there is very little that isn’t connected in some way to textile manufacturing. Obviously the mills, but there’s the grazing land, there’s the big buildings, the superb buildings, the art in the galleries. Leeds University was funded by cloth workers.”

Ms Shepherd is co-director of Future Fashion Factory (FFF), a £5.6m R&D programme based at the University of Leeds, bringing together designers, manufacturers and retailers.

“I’m always trying to push young designers, young brands to work with regional mills. This is central to how we started Future Fashion Factory,” she says. “People think the mills in Yorkshire are these dusty, old places. They are not.”

With its soft water and sheep-friendly pastures, West Yorkshire has been a textile weaving centre since Anglo-Saxon times. The Industrial Revolution brought mechanisation, and with it those mighty mills that came to dominate the North’s urban landscape.

When Salt’s Mill opened in 1853, it was the biggest factory in the world with 1,200 looms making 30,000 yards of cloth a day. It stopped making cloth in 1986, as did so many UK mills during the 1980s and ‘90s, unable to compete with cheaper overseas producers.

But there are survivors, with notable Yorkshire mills still weaving today. AW Hainsworth, founded in 1783, makes quality cloth at its Pudsey mill, for markets from haute couture to the scarlet tunic cloth of the Royal Guards.

Abraham Moon, Guiseley, founded in 1837, is one of the few remaining vertical woollen mills in the UK, producing cloth from raw wool through to finishing at one site. Batley-based Joshua Ellis began in 1767, and is still weaving its luxury cashmere scarves and fabrics today.

Yorkshire was once a major clothes producer, too. In the 1850s, ready-to-wear was born when John Barran built a factory in Leeds. Soon there were numerous tailoring manufacturers in the city. In 1925, Burtons employed 10,000 people making 30,000 suits a week at Hudson Road, said to be the largest clothing factory in the world. By the late 1950s the workforce had declined to 5,000 and manufacturing had stopped by 1981.

Clothing production is labour-intensive, so achieved far more cheaply overseas, in China, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Pakistan and elsewhere.

In 2023, there were 4,260 apparel manufacturers in the UK, perhaps surprisingly up from 3,365 in 2011, according to the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT). There were 3,880 textile manufacturers in 2011, rising to 4,355 in 2023.

But those figures do not tell the whole story. Tara Hounslea, UKFT director of Communications, says: “While official figures suggest the number of UK clothing and textile manufacturers has remained broadly stable overall over the last few years, there are significant differences between the two sectors.

“The clothing segment continues to see a churn of smaller, often unregistered producers, reflecting lower start-up barriers.

“In contrast, textile manufacturing, particularly at commercial scale, requires greater capital investment, making growth slower and more consolidated. Brexit-related trade friction, labour shortages, the effects of the pandemic, inflation and global competition have all shaped recent trends.”

Challenges are constant, no matter the size of the business, how famous its name, or where it makes its clothes. Last month Burberry reported a £66m loss in the last financial year and said it could cut 1,700 jobs, reducing its global workforce by almost a fifth, with night shifts stopped at its Castleford factory, where it has been making its signature trench coats since 1972.

“I want to be very clear that we are making this change to safeguard our UK manufacturing,” said Burberry chief executive Joshua Schulman. “And in fact we will be making a significant investment to renovate this factory in the second half.”

Burberry makes its gabardine at the Burberry Mill in Keighley, part of today’s portfolio of prestigious Yorkshire weavers. Suzy Shepherd would like to see clothing made in Yorkshire given the same global respect given to the cloth made here.

“It’s considered creme de la creme, and has been for centuries,” she says. “Overseas, those markets, particularly the luxury markets, just know it - it’s like beluga caviar. It’s got to be the best, and that is still manufactured here, thank goodness. Not competing with cheap fabric, synthetics, China, all those things.”

There are note-worthy clothing manufacturers in Yorkshire, of course - Slaithwaite-based McNair Shirts makes its mountain shirts at its own mill, using cloth woven in Huddersfield.

But Yorkshire needs more locally-made fashion and clothing, says Ms Shepherd. The new generation of Fashion students has an extensive knowledge of local textile manufacturers, she says, adding: “We’ve got to get the enthusiasm and funding behind encouraging small young brands so they can manufacture effectively.

“There’s a lot of growth there, I’m still convinced of that, and working with textile manufacturers of high quality is a big help.”

Indeed, there are a number of Yorkshire designers working closely with Yorkshire mills, including Cunnington & Sanderson, based in Silsden, who have worked with Hainsworth, Linton Tweeds, Clissolds and Abraham Moon.

York-based, internationally-renowned fashion designer Matty Bovan won the International Woolmark Prize for his technically advanced weave designs developed in collaboration with Hainsworth and woven on its jacquard looms.

Sustainability is a vital factor for the current generation of designers and makers, and working with local firms reduces the carbon footprint.

Sheffield is leading the UK in upcycling, thanks to vintage clothing company Glass Onion, which processes up to 20,000kg of secondhand clothing a week at its in-house remade factory, transforming damaged clothes and off-cuts into new designs producing up to 10,000 remade items a month. It has expanded into retail, with two stores in Sheffield, one in Leeds and one in Nottingham.

“Rising interest in sustainability and reshoring offers opportunities for growth if supported by targeted investment, skills development and coherent policy frameworks,” says the UKFT’s Tara Hounslea.

Suzy Shepherd believes that collaboration and collectivity are key for fashion designer-makers, says Ms Shepherd.

“It’s the skills and having some way of finding their niche in the market. There’s lots of talent around, lots of small independents doing their thing. It would be nice to have something that shows new cutting edge design brands, in an ideal world, linking in with mills.”