This article is part of a series where we unpack what the ‘Made in the UK’ label stands for in 2025, and what it tells us about the future of onshoring. Read our series on ‘Made in Italy’ here, and ‘Made in India’ here.
The UK’s fashion industry is critically imbalanced. Every year, thousands of young people enter the university education funnel with dreams of becoming fashion designers, merchandisers or stylists — jobs associated with the glamourous façade of the industry. But the number of people lining up to learn to cut, knit, weave or sew clothes has waned drastically, resulting in an incoming workforce with big ideas but limited technical know-how.
In 1980, the textile and clothing manufacturing industries employed 700,000 workers, 10 per cent of the manufacturing industry. Now, just 88,000 people are employed in the fashion and textile manufacturing sector across England, Scotland and Wales, according to the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT), the industry’s leading trade association and sector skills body (designated by the government to develop and promote skills and standards within the industry).
With a dwindling workforce comes a widening skills gap. When it was an industrial powerhouse and a leading employer, the sector could rely on a steady stream of young people who were socially and geographically primed to join its ranks — if their family and friends worked in the local textile industry, it was logical that they would too. But as the sector contracted due to shifting global trade policies and, later, mass offshoring, the legacy of skills transfer faltered, as did manufacturing’s reputation as a lifelong career provider.
The UK has a rich fashion manufacturing heritage, but the industry stands at a crossroads — it can either adapt to the new, tariff-accelerated era of localisation and thrive, or settle for decline.
“We have a large group of people who are due to retire in the next 10 years, and we don’t necessarily have their replacements,” says Elliot Barlow, special projects manager at UKFT.
Pre-Brexit, it seemed safe to rely on a significant proportion of those replacements coming from other EU countries, where manufacturing thrived as the sector globalised. Like many manufacturers, London-based Creative Sample Studio (CSS) became highly reliant on Eastern European talent as the UK skills gap widened. “The education of practical skills like pattern-cutting and sewing is really strong in Eastern Europe. We realised that even among people with the same experience, who are the same age, the quality is different [between British workers and those from Eastern Europe],” says CSS co-founder Evgeniya Khorosheva.
But Brexit has interrupted the flow of those workers into the UK. The end of freedom of movement meant EU nationals faced visa requirements and complex paperwork in order to retain their employment and right to live in the UK, while employers required sponsorship licences to hire non-UK workers. Aside from the administrative burden, in the wake of the Brexit vote, many EU textile workers left because they felt unwelcome due to the political climate, taking much-needed skills with them, multiple sources say.
“In the ’90s and 2000s, we were recruiting people from Europe that had technical skills that they had learnt in Europe, but that has become more difficult with Brexit,” says Chris Gaffney, chief executive of Scottish luxury brand and manufacturer Johnstons of Elgin. “It accelerates the need to have a homegrown workforce where we’re developing those skills internally, and we’re not relying on areas of Europe where textiles are still strong.”
The UK government is making moves to try and remove some of the barriers to employing workers from outside of the UK while such a domestic workforce is developed. As part of its so-called ‘Brexit reset’ deal, Britain is set to enter talks with the EU to make it easier for people to get visas to work in the UK — but as of yet, no specific details have emerged. Skills such as embroidery, sewing, weaving and knitting are included in the new Skilled Worker visa, however the minimum eligible salary is at least £38,700 (or £30,960 for those under 26), taking many of the lower paid but essential entry-level operative jobs out of the equation. The employee sponsorship requirements, admin costs, time limits and paperwork also remain, meaning a worthwhile boost for the textile manufacturing sector is unlikely.
A perfect storm
Brexit has exacerbated the industry’s recruitment issues, but it’s not the only challenge it faces. “There’s a combination of factors, it’s a perfect storm,” says Diana Kakkar, founder and chief executive of womenswear manufacturer Maes London. Factory closures and job losses caused by the Covid pandemic, an ageing workforce, an uncertain retail landscape and a lack of confidence for long-term hiring all play their part, she says.
A few years ago, Kakkar would advertise for three production roles at a time, confident she could find the talent and financially sustain the salaries with sufficient orders. Now, Kakkar isn’t certain whether she would get enough high-quality applicants to fill just one role. “I put an ad up, and I have to keep on waiting for the right person,” she says. “The growth of my business is limited by the skill set, which exists in the industry.”
To rebuild skill sets domestically, the industry must stimulate interest among young people in entering a career in fashion and textile manufacturing, but there’s yet another element to the storm: manufacturing has a bad reputation.
Skilled operative roles such as sewing machinists, weaving machinists, footwear manufacturers and leather craftspeople are particularly difficult to fill, UKFT’s Barlow says. “[These roles] have got this latent stigma of being a career path that doesn’t allow you to progress, doesn’t give you good pay, doesn’t give you good conditions. The impacts of fast fashion manufacturing taking place in Leicester [where some suppliers were accused in 2020 of paying below the legal minimum wage] have made it very difficult for UK manufacturers to shake off this notion of a poor pay, poor practice approach,” he says.
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The next generation of fashion professionals is exposed to the hype and the glamour of the much-coveted star designer career path via social media, documentaries and high-profile interviews, but have much less context for, or contact with, the production supply chain that brings the creative ideas to life. The bad press informs their views. To course-correct, Gaffney says you have to “get them while they’re young”.
“It’s really important that we’ve got a good interaction with all the local schools. We have groups of little kids in hi-vis jackets wandering onto the site to get an experience of what textiles actually means,” he says. The company, which has mills in Elgin and Hawick, invites pupils back at various stages of their school years and runs a programme where, for two hours a week for 12 weeks, pupils come in to learn some of the different skills Johnstons of Elgin’s 1,100-strong workforce of chemists, dyers, spinners, weavers, linkers, knitters and more have in their arsenal. “Then, hopefully we’ll employ them, which is great,” says Gaffney. Once they are employed, the company offers continued development via apprenticeships, post-graduate qualifications and its own courses, which have been accredited by the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Education isn’t one-size-fits-all
Educating the next generation internally is a surefire way to ensure they have the requisite skills and attitude to step into the roles of those retiring. Around eight years ago, British Wool, which collects, grades, markets and sells British wool, took stock of its graders, who assess the quality of wool, and saw it was heading for multiple retirements with no one to fill the imminent void. “We put things in place to have a training programme set up and it’s working really well,” says Graham Clark, British Wool director of marketing. With the wool depots in British Wool’s network being particularly well connected, the company didn’t struggle to recruit for the practical, on-the-job training. The farmer’s cooperative, which also trains between 800 and 1,000 shearers per year, doesn’t receive government funding to provide the training but sees it as an important investment in the future of domestic wool. “By doing this, we’re helping the farmers, we’re helping the industry,” says Clark.
The team at Johnstons of Elgin began accelerating efforts to bring through the next generation of skilled technicians around a decade ago when they realised they could no longer rely on recruiting talent from other mills that were closing locally. “As the textile industry has shrunk over the last few generations, we came to recognise we had to stand on our own two feet and not put our hand out too much because there’s not much help out there. We have to develop the highest possible level of skills internally and if we can do that, we can be here for another couple of hundred years,” says Gaffney. “But that’s easy for us to say because we’re a bigger organisation, it’s very difficult if you’re a startup.”
According to the Office of National Statistics, over 99 per cent of fashion and textile manufacturing businesses in the UK are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 250 employees, and they do not have the budget, hours, or personnel to single-handedly train their own future workforce. This is where the UK’s education system needs to step in — but it’s failing to bridge the gap, critics say.
“Designers at university now don’t learn how to design for weave. They draw a picture and that’s it. A jacquard loom can weave 14 different fabrics at once at different layers — it’s more like drawing a cartoon. We’ve had three graduates run out of here crying because they thought they could run an embroidery department, but they don’t know how to design for weave. We were happy to teach them, but it was too much for them,” says Judith Neilly, managing director of Thomas Ferguson Irish Linen.
Naeem Riaz, co-founder of US-based swatching and development studio Maeknit, believes there is not a single course, institution, or organisation that is capable of teaching knitting to meet the necessary industry standard. The company is planning to branch out to the UK market and open a knitwear academy in London in the coming months in partnership with garment manufacturing social enterprise Fashion Enter, and has been approached by industry professionals with training requests before its doors have even opened.
“I think the disparity between industry and education is too large. Further education and higher education institutions just can’t pivot quickly enough,” says Jenny Holloway, CEO and founder of Fashion Enter, which provides industry education and training. Holloway has sought to tackle the problem from various angles, from running ‘factory uncovered’ seminars with universities that teach students about industry practices and standards, to opening the Fashion Technology Academy (FTA) in 2016 in collaboration with Haringey Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, and Asos. Across campuses in Haringey, Islington, Leicester and Newtown, Wales, the independent training provider offers Level 1 to 5 courses in pattern-cutting, stitching, tailoring, production skills and others including workers’ rights and CAD/CAM. Courses are much more specific than the broad church of skills and concepts today’s fashion students learn as universities attempt to prepare them for a wide range of possible careers to maximise graduate employment success.
Until last year, Holloway says the academy had a budget of a “good six figures” to run adult skills courses from Capital City College, the company that subcontracts the FTA to deliver its fashion education, however a change in CEO in 2024 saw the budget slashed and now there are 70 people on the waiting list who could be in training and working towards skilled employment.
Universities, too, are fighting external economic forces. The bigger the cohort, the more revenue a university can generate from a course, so it makes financial sense to offer courses to the masses who wish to be the next creative director or hit stylist. But it’s not necessarily what the industry needs. “There aren’t enough jobs for everyone to be creative directors, but there are amazing opportunities for careers in fashion manufacturing if you’re willing to take on more training,” says Virginia Grose, interim head of Westminster School of Arts, which will launch its fashion manufacturing MA in September 2025, developed with UKFT with the aim of addressing skills shortages in apparel production, systems, sourcing and manufacturing.
After surviving Brexit, Covid and countless other reckonings, UK-based fashion and textiles manufacturers have learnt a lot about what it takes to stay afloat in the modern era of production.
The course seeks to equip its cohort for modern production, encompassing elements such as auditing, risk, legislation and production innovation. “We need to make manufacturing sexy again in the UK, and this is about attracting the right talent and filling the gap for graduates who are interested in that technical side. We’ve got to sell the innovation to potential entrants,” Grose says.
Innovation vs tradition
Sometimes doing so can all come down to language. Grose explains that simply putting ‘fashion’ in the course title can attract graduates who might have balked at an MA on production management. Jess Dudley, managing director of British knitwear brand and manufacturer John Smedley, agrees. “We have changed how we advertise roles and recruit. Three years ago, we were trying to hire a wash and dyehouse manager, which is a die-hard, age-old manufacturing job title. No one was applying, so they asked for my help,” Dudley says. “The job description was really interesting — it was about bridging the gap between design and creating the colour, perfecting those recipes so people get what they asked for. But the job title sounded like something from the industrial revolution, so we renamed it ‘technical colourist’. A month later, we had a raft of applications and now we have a recent graduate called Grace who has joined our team.”
In other cases, it’s a shift in infrastructure that might do the trick. Professor Susan Postlethwaite is director of the Robotics Living Lab (RoLL) at Manchester Fashion Institute, which aims to create adaptable, affordable manufacturing spaces in which humans work alongside robots (performing tasks such as 3D scanning and cutting) to create “high-value, low-volume fashion” in the UK. “At RoLL, we believe the best way to get a younger generation engaged in fashion fabrication is to train them in using digital tools, collaborative robots [how RoLL refers to the manufacturing robots in its lab], agile tooling and artificial intelligence. We would like to challenge, promote and encourage young designers to reimagine the way fashion is fabricated,” Postlethwaite says.
Sustainability and circularity are other levers the industry can pull to attract new talent. Johnstons of Elgin’s Gaffney has seen interest in homegrown manufacturing rise over the last five years as the younger generation’s interest in slow fashion and craft has gained traction, while Holloway of Fashion Enter is betting on the draw of repairs. “Could I get a 22-year-old to join a production line? Probably not. It’s not desirable at all. Could I get them to save the planet and stop a garment going into landfill? The younger generation wants to work in repairs,” she says.
Exciting technical, ethical and sustainable developments in manufacturing may well attract new interest to the sector, but as the skills gap is most acute at the operative level, it remains crucial to fill roles such as stitching and weaving, which, while they have modernised, are regarded as traditional — even old fashioned. This is where apprenticeships can flourish with the allure of a debt-free path into skilled employment, says Barlow. However, he acknowledges they can be frustrating for employers to engage with because they require a lot of setting up, from finding the training organisation to securing funding.
All UK employers with an annual salary of more than £3 million must pay the UK’s apprenticeship levy, introduced in 2017, charged at a rate of 0.5 per cent of the total annual bill. Ostensibly, those employers can then access levy funds to spend on apprenticeship training, however Gaffney says the reality isn’t so straightforward. “We pay probably about £150,000 a year in an apprenticeship levy, and we get back £40,000 in terms of funding apprenticeships,” he says. This is due, in part, to the levy being applied and distributed by the UK government, while in Johnstons of Elgin’s case, skills and training are undertaken by the Scottish government. In other cases, levy-paying employers struggle with the bureaucracy of accessing the funds, as well as a lack of time to invest in the training process. As a result, a 2022 investigation revealed that more than £3.3 billion in levy funds went unspent since 2019 and were returned to the Treasury due to its “use it or lose it” rules.
This money, Holloway believes, could be redistributed to those who have jobs available but need to provide the training to fill them. In Holloway’s case, she has 10 factory jobs up for grabs, but lacks the funds to train prospective employees.
Funding alone won’t solve the problem. The skills gap needs targeted, joined-up intervention from the education sector, industry, brands and retailers, and government to tackle all issues in tandem, experts say: improving the sector’s reputation, directing funding where it’s needed, introducing the next generation to the sector early, and investing in domestic manufacturing itself via wholesale orders from retailers and tax incentives from the government so there are plentiful jobs waiting at the end of the training pipeline.
Such a concerted political, social and economic shift is a tall order, but those who believe in the industry think it’s worth the effort to provide future generations with meaningful, fulfilling work. “It’s physically and mentally engaging in a positive way. It keeps your mind healthy, and it keeps your body healthy,” says Patrick Grant, owner of Community Clothing and Blackburn-based factory Cookson Clegg. “You look at people who have spent many years working and become very skilled at this, and they’re very happy, they take great pride in their work and [have] a great deal of satisfaction.”
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