On the fringes of London Fashion Week last month, independent designer Lucy Tammam and vertical farming innovators Gooddrop presented a world first: a dress made from cotton grown in the UK. In the space of just four weeks, the cotton was harvested from a controlled-environment lab at the University of Nottingham, ginned by hand at the head office of Gooddrop in Hull, East Yorkshire, spun in Switzerland, woven in Austria, cut and sewn at Tammam’s atelier in London and worn on a runway in the British capital’s borough of Camden.
“I’ve worked with India for years, and I love India, and I completely respect the cotton farmers there, but the thought of being able to create something that is completely, from fiber to finishing, on my doorstep, that really excites me,” says Tammam via video call. “I think we’re sort of at this point that we need to step back from the globalization story and actually start localizing everything.”
Simon Wardle co-founded Gooddrop three years ago after a career in architecture and interior design for retail. While working on a project which involved a vertical farming concept, where crops are grown indoors in stacked layers by artificially controlling the conditions, he became fascinated by it as a solution to the climate crisis. Thinking about his retail clients and the issues he had heard with cotton, he invested his and his business partner’s own money into launching a solution in the UK.
“We learned just how difficult [cotton] was on so many levels: from resource use, land use and all the ecological side of it, but also in terms of the traceability of the resource and the honesty of the supply chain. We thought, well, if we grow it in one of our facilities, surely we could solve nearly all of those problems,” says Wardle.
After several years of development to perfect the farming and production technique, the first dress has been made through his partnership with Tammam. Now, Wardle and his business partner are looking to partner with other businesses and raise investment to scale the idea.
Tammam and Gooddrop may be breaking new ground for the types of textiles that can be grown in the UK, but British fashion is also growing its capacity for more conventional local materials as independent designers look for transparency in supply chains.
Sophie Holt founded Pigment Organic Dyes, a half-acre plot of land on a farming collective in Devon three years ago to grow flowers for natural dyes. At the time of its launch it was the first natural dye farm in the UK. Not only does the farm practice organic farming, it is also a social enterprise providing jobs in a therapeutic environment for young adults with additional needs.
Her clients are often independent British designers, makers and textile artists as well as universities who use them in their classrooms. “A lot of people say that they love the ethos of what Pigment does. It’s not only environmentally considerate, but also it’s got this social arm to it,” Holt tells me. “It’s not so much the organic, I’m not sensing that’s the draw even though I’m the only person producing organic dyes in the UK.”
Holt is a member of the South West England contingency of Fibershed, a global movement started in Northern California in 2010, which champions hyperlocal and regenerative textile systems. Holt says that when she attended one of the UK’s largest farming conferences in 2019 there was no one representing fiber farming, but in January this year Fibershed hosted a networking event at the conference attended by 50 farmers.
“It’s not only the producers that are growing, but I also think consumer interest is growing. Otherwise, my business wouldn’t be selling out of dyes before the season. They’re selling out each year earlier,” Holt says.
This October British Pasture Leather, a supplier of certified UK leather, has launched a limited edition Made With collection of products in partnership with British makers and studios for the first time. Partners include accessories labels Been London and Beorma and furniture makers OTZI who are offering products on a pre-order basis ready in time for Christmas.
British Pasture Leather has not raised any investment since launching in 2021 and the collection was an opportunity to crowdfund its work, as well as showcase the capabilities of their leather. In the first few days of launch, several products sold out and British Pasture Leather received multiple requests for swatches and to ask about the possibility of joining future Made With collections.
For the brands and makers, British Pasture Leather co-founder Alice Robinson says via video call this was an opportunity to add unique storytelling to their products: “There was a lot of excitement and interest to collaborate on this because it’s something that’s quite different as a proposition to their own audiences.”
British Pasture Leather is the first supplier to offer leather from certified pasture-fed cattle in the UK and is also vegetable tanned in the UK. Robinson, an accessories designer who begun to question the traceability of leather while studying at the Royal College of Art, co-founded the business with Sara Grady, who has more than 20 years’ experience creating sustainable agriculture systems in both the US and UK.
Tanneries typically purchase hides based on their properties for the type of leather they wish to produce, often meaning that hides are imported and exported around the world to find the right buyer with little traceability. British Pasture Leathers flips this model to produce a material outcome based on what pasture-fed farms can provide. They take custody of the hides from the farm, along the chain, ensuring its provenance and practices.
In recent years, the sustainability movement has pushed fashion brands to document where their clothes are made. Now brands are going even further into their supply chains to try and trace it back to the farm level. This is a huge challenge for large brands with complex global supply chains and smaller brands have an advantage. The rise of UK-grown fashion is providing greater access to parts of the supply chain which are often on the other side of the world to British makers.
Both Pigment Organic Dyes and British Pasture Leather offer workshops and field trips to show the impact of their work to clients.
Fifteen years ago, Great Cotmarsh Farm in Wiltshire was rearing sheep and cattle for food when it diversified to include a knitwear brand made from its own wool. This was followed by a botanical dye garden to supply the knitwear brand, and this year it opened a tannery. Currently, the tannery is using the farm’s own livestock but it will soon launch a service for other farms to procure leather from their own hides.
Great Cotmarsh Farm has built its own classroom too and offers tours and workshops for school and university students which are supported by grants from the UK Government’s Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs and the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers guild. Since opening in May, 300 students have visited the farm.
Larger brands are showing an interest too. A team of apprentices from Dr Martens will be heading to Great Cotmarsh Farm next month to learn in an immersive environment.
Katie Allen, one half of the couple who run Great Cotmarsh Farm, says that she would like to see UK farmers taken more seriously in the fashion industry: “The fashion industry looks at [UK fiber farming] and sees it as small scale and hobby-esque. I think that’s a real shame because I know, having seen the Fibershed model, and seen the students responding to this sort of environment, how powerful it can be,” she says. “Even if they’re not able to embrace all of it, there are ideas within it that are really key.”
Scale is certainly an issue and, for now, Grown in the UK is mostly offered at a premium in small quantities that deters mainstream fashion brands, but it is starting to have an impact on the wider sector.
Allen’s partner James says: “Bring your staff here. Come and have a look. We’re not going to give you a supply chain, but we’ll help you understand why it’s important, and what the gold standard is. Then go away and challenge your supply chain and start bringing the knowledge you gain from here into your supply chain.”
They also hope that fashion students visiting the farm will bring the knowledge from their visit with them as they enter the industry to create a shift.
While for now it remains a small, yet burgeoning, sector of British sustainable fashion, it belongs to a global movement that could see our clothing labels tell us not just “made in” but “grown in” too.