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.
Despite decades of offshoring and a decline in homegrown manufacturing talent, ‘Made in the UK’ still carries cachet in the fashion industry. Countless established brands have garnered loyal international followings by extolling the virtues of local production, with a focus on quality, craftsmanship and heritage — Mulberry, Barbour and Burberry among them. Now, a new generation of British brands is working to revive the industry that built that reputation, spurred on by shipping disruptions, trade tariffs and a regulatory emphasis on transparency.
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.
But fanning the flames of British manufacturing is no easy feat. Labour costs are much higher in the UK than in other garment-producing countries, and a lack of investment has left some manufacturers lagging behind their overseas competitors. The workforce is ageing, the talent pipeline is shrinking and there is a serious lack of locally grown raw materials — with limited infrastructure in place to process those available.
Still, a growing number of small, independent brands say they are proud to support the Made in the UK label. In conversations with eight brand founders, Vogue Business explores the future of British manufacturing and how the broader industry could help to make it a reality.
Isabel Holland
Co-founder of Midlands-based knitwear brand Hades
All of our jumpers and scarves are made in Hawick at Teviot Knitwear, the skirts are made in Somerset by a two-person team called Artisan Seams, and the cardigans are made in Spain. As much as possible we try to source locally, for a multitude of reasons. We started as a knitwear brand, and Scotland is famous for knitwear — the quality of the product is incredible. We also want to make conscious decisions, and it’s easier for us to build a good relationship with people if they are relatively local. We see our manufacturers as an extension of our team. We are putting our trust in them.
It’s expensive to produce in the UK and not everyone’s educated on the quality and the time that goes into every piece, which is the reason for the higher price point. We try to keep our retail price as low as possible — we want it to be accessible — so we work with tight margins. We have a ‘how we make your clothes’ page on the website, and we put ‘Made in England’ or ‘Made in Scotland’ on the swing tags and on woven labels. We talk about it as much as possible — we are proud of it!
A couple of years ago, [actress] Tilda Swinton, who was a customer of ours, reached out to say that she was passing through Hawick and asked if she could visit the Teviot factory. We took the opportunity to ask about collaborating, and that resulted in a collection that was like a love letter to Scottish manufacturing. Alongside the collection, we highlighted the artisans who made the pieces, with portraits and interviews, to highlight the cultural and social importance of supporting local manufacturing.
Rachel Carvell-Spedding
Founder of London-based knitwear brand Navygrey
The idea for Navygrey came from this 25-year-old jumper my mum had. There was no brand label on it, but it said ‘Made in the UK’. It had this lovely soft feeling. I couldn’t find one like it on the market, so I set out on this quest to see if I could produce a jumper with that same feeling. Manufacturing in the UK we found we could easily do, but I felt the audience wasn’t ready for the unique, coarse qualities that often come with British wool, so we went down the route of using Australian Merino for launch. But we always wanted it to be British wool, not just British made. As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to work with different British wools, including wool from the crofters [individual small landholders] on the Shetland Islands in Scotland. We aren’t able to exclusively use British wool just yet — it’s currently around 20 per cent — but this is growing, and 80 per cent of our knits are made in the UK, which is really important to us.
Should we be exclusively British? Not necessarily. There are really great knitters in the UK, but we are at risk of losing some of those skills, and if that happens, we’ve got a real problem. It’s not just knitting, either. We need sorters and wool graders. Otherwise, the wool gets lost and it has no real value. We work with a brilliant knitter in Portugal who has a small entity and she’s great. And our spinner in Scotland — Todd Duncan — doesn’t process British wool, but they employ a huge amount of local people, and they’ve got real expertise and innovation. It’s more about working with really good people who we’re regularly in touch with. We’re constantly looking for ways to give more to British manufacturing. Where are the tags made? The buttons? What else can we make here?
Buffy Reid
Co-founder of London-based women’s and men’s knitwear brand &Daughter
When we launched in 2013, a lot of factories were closing and a lot of makers weren’t very busy — they were in decline. It’s been so interesting to see in the last 12 years how that’s come back to life. All of our makers now are extremely busy and having to turn down business or find a way to scale. Covid probably accelerated that because awareness grew of how and where things are made.
It’s a very tough retail landscape at the moment, but knitwear is doing well and I think that’s because it’s become a linchpin piece in people’s wardrobes — worn throughout the week and all year long. We make everything in the UK or in Ireland, depending on the season. About 80 per cent of the collection is made in Scotland. Most of our yarns are sourced from Todd Duncan in Kinross. We use some British wool, but most of it is cashmere or lambswool that’s imported, predominantly from Australia. Our lambswool from Geelong in Australia has such a low micron count [the diameter of the wool fibres], it is just kind of unrivalled and it spins beautifully. That is naturally where our business has grown, because it has that same wearability as a cashmere piece, but for £300, not £1,000.
A very important part of what we do is more specialist craft, such as hand intarsia, which Teviot Knitwear can do for us. Being able to keep that going is important to us, which is partly why we support smaller makers. However, some of our smaller makers have an ageing workforce — they’re all reaching retirement. So you need bigger players like Johnstons of Elgin, too, because they’re the ones who are going to do the apprenticeships schemes. They’re the ones that are going to have the ability to bring on that next generation, and then the other makers around them will also benefit.
There are the histories in towns like Hawick. Everyone’s related to the industry in some way. Sometimes on a tough day, I think about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and it helps to remember that it all leads back to these communities.
Marco Vaghetti
Founder of Lancashire-based footwear brand and manufacturer Lanx
Our belts are made in Whalley, Lancashire, the buckles come from Hobbit Hill down the road, the hats are made in Nottingham, the scarves, the wallets and the bags come from Burnley, and the jerseys are produced in Staffordshire. All of our accessories are Made in the UK, and around 60 per cent of the shoes are. We also work with some fantastic factories in Portugal and India, which we partnered with during the pandemic, when British factories were shutting left and right. We’re looking to significantly increase UK production at the moment, but a few of our factories aren’t sure whether they can deal with the increased demand.
I have big ambitions to grow our manufacturing base here. I’ve already spoken to the local council in Rossendale [a district in Lancashire that used to have over 200 footwear factories, but now only has one] and we have a TV crew on standby to document the process. In many ways, we’re a victim of our own success — the truth is, I need to raise £4 million to expand our factory and team to service the demand of our ambitious UK growth plans, which we hope to achieve in the coming years. It’s that cross between purity and growth, isn’t it? I would love to make everything in the UK, but sometimes you have to make compromises in the short term to keep up momentum.
Our Made in the UK shoes range from £180 to £300-plus, but the overseas products start around £165, so there is a reasonable price difference. Every product page says where the product was made, and then it’s up to the customer to decide what they want to spend their money on. Making shoes in the UK costs four or five times as much as producing overseas, and the quality can vary. I’ve visited over 200 factories in the last 10 years and there is definitely room for the UK to improve in terms of quality control and consistency. We might have invented a lot of manufacturing processes, which the world has now adopted, but the reality is that other countries lead the way with some production methods.
Amy Anderson
Co-founder and creative director of Northern Irish linen brand Kindred of Ireland
The whole ethos behind Kindred of Ireland is about finding new and unexpected ways to use Irish linen. My great uncle, who worked in the local linen industry, helped me find a mill selling offcuts and leftover linen. There aren’t a lot of Irish linen mills left. One of the mills we work with is William Clark Sons in Londonderry. It’s the last remaining producer of beetled linen. When the mill went into liquidation last year, we felt a real responsibility to help keep the skill alive. So much of our marketing and storytelling is about beetled linen — it would be a nightmare for the brand if it ceased to exist. We’ve put all of our eggs in one basket with Irish linen, so situations like that can be quite nerve-wracking. We really need these mills to survive.
My husband Joel manages production and operations. His biggest challenge has been finding people with the right skills who can continue to make our clothes as we grow at a steady rate. We don’t produce in a factory with a huge production line — we work with six seamstresses who make the garments at home, so they can be flexible around their families and other work, and then we have a small CMT [cut, make and trim] partner nearby, for when we have big orders come in. It’s almost like a modern cottage industry. They produce made-to-order, so we never carry waste.
Growing up in Northern Ireland, it often felt like a career in fashion was out of bounds, because there were so few job opportunities here, and there isn’t a strong ecosystem to support designers like there is in London. Last year, we were one of the winners of the ‘Meanwhile On’ programme run by the City of Westminster, so we got to do a pop-up on Oxford Street. That was invaluable — it exposed us to the right people and strengthened our customer base. In Northern Ireland, people sometimes think the price is ludicrously high. In London, people often told us the price was too low.
Ruth Alice Rands
Founder of Gloucestershire-based womenswear brand Herd
At the core of Herd are two principles: provenance and nature. A desire to nurture heritage ecosystems rooted in place, which have evolved around the landscape and are soil specific to that place. British wool is perfect in that way, due to a centuries-old relationship between land, fibre and manufacturing ability — it can still be grown, scoured, carded, combed, spun and knit in one region. When I started, farmers and factories had very low expectations of what could be done with British wool and how much customers would pay for it.
Herd uses only 100 per cent pedigree Bluefaced Leicester fleeces — a little-known British breed with an exceptionally fine fleece — and we are the first to create a single-breed, single-origin North of England yarn, which is suitable for luxury knitwear. The network of farmers I brought together responded well. The Bluefaced Leicester breed is more delicate than the hill breeds, so farmers have more contact with them and keep them in smaller numbers. The farmers often have favourites and they were pleased to see the wool being used.
At the beginning, I was selling the Bluefaced Leicester yarn to other brands to make their own knitwear, telling the story in their own languages, with their own images. That really provided a platform for our network of farmers to grow; but at the same time, it became problematic, because these brands were talking about the innovations in fibre and yarn development, hyper-local supply chains and plant dyeing that we had created and funded. That was a tension in the brand for a few years, and it’s why we stopped supplying the yarn.
For Herd, Made in the UK is non-negotiable. For sourcing fabrics other than wool, we have to look further afield, because the UK doesn’t grow cotton or linen. We are now about to showcase heritage ecosystems that support the manufacturing of raw materials close to where they are grown — be that French linen or Indian cotton. I think materials should be grown where the climate and the infrastructure makes sense, rather than trying to force it with chemicals, polytunnels and lots of energy, just for the sake of saying it’s made locally. The cutting and sewing still happens in the UK, as does the finishing and its trims.
Polly McMaster
Founder of London-based women’s workwear brand The Fold
Our premise has always been, what’s the right supply chain for the product? The other consideration is where we source our fabrics and where the garments are constructed. Most of our fabrics are Italian, so we’ll work with the artisan mills there to tap into their generations of knowledge and talent. But we also work with some of the amazing British mills. So for example, most of our tweeds are from Linton Tweeds, who are known for making for Chanel. And some tailoring will be Made in the UK. It’s an important part of what we do, but it will always come down to the question of can we achieve the right product, at the right price point?
Our UK-made product tends to be higher up on our product range architecture. Beautiful tweed jackets, for example, or it might be a coat. Our customer is affluent, she can afford it, but she needs to see the value in it. If it’s something unique and beautiful that she can’t find anywhere else, then she will be prepared to spend the money on it.
Making in the UK has to be part of a bigger picture. We can’t shift everything here. One of the things in our brand that I feel so strongly about is the craftsmanship element. There are people in Italy who have generations of knowledge; you can’t just take that and replicate it somewhere else.
Luke Derrick
Founder of London-based menswear brand Derrick
I make everything in the UK. All my wovens are made in North London with a non-profit called Fashion Enter, the jersey is all made in Leicester at a facility called Colourways Textiles. There’s a new sampling studio 10 minutes from my flat in London called Tricot Studios that does my knitted accessories. I’m of that London system of bootstrapping a label from zero, and so most of my hunt for the supply chain has been very grassroots and about immediacy, about trying to find people to make things happen and a big emphasis around low minimum order quantities.
I think it’s part of the British psyche to be quite self-deprecating. But we’ve got two centuries-plus of British textile and manufacturing and garment manufacturing history here, and there’s an opportunity to rebuild that. So I’m proud to say I make stuff in the UK. I might make it cheaper in Portugal, but the minimum order quantities would be really high; and if something goes wrong, it’s a plane journey. Whereas now, I can just take the bus and fix the problem at the facility. When you’re building new ideas and creating new garments, you need to be there, on the factory floor. It’s a humbling and necessary thing.
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