Can Britain’s wool textile industry be saved?

Press, 6 July 1983, Page 8

Can Britain’s wool textile industry be saved?

New Zealand is Britain’s major source of imported wool, much of it destined for fabric mills. Today ANGUS STEWART continues his three-part series on the ailing British textile industry’s future — a fate to which our export fortunes are tied.

I must start by saying that a week before I visited the first of the two British textile exhibitons recently, J was in Rome.

Now Rome is a hard act to follow, particularly if the act concerns apparel fabrics.

For not only is Rome one of the fashion centres of the world, it is also the capital of a country which leads in textile production. In Rome I was continually amazed by the quality of imagination and design expressed in textiles. Around every street corner and on almost every back, there was something that was original and fresh. I admit that after Rome I expected to find the British wool textiles unexciting. I was wrong. The recession has severely reduced production. In 1982 exports were only 60 per cent in volume of the 1978 figure. The companies, however, that have survived are dazzling with their innovation and amazing with their simple and elegant modernisation of traditional products.

I was wrong. For, although the high quality production in Britain is now in business terms a cottage industry, there is nothing parochial about the people who run it.

Almost all the companies export the bulk of their production, in many cases between 75 per cent and 90 per cent. Sales people talk as casually of selling in Los Angeles and Tokyo as if they are only a few miles down the road.

Technical developments are made in response to garment manufacturing requirements in factories scattered around the globe.

It looks as if the British wool textile industry has carved for itself an important role in the evolution of its industry without claiming sufficient acknowledgement either nationally or internationally. Johnstons of Elgin typifies developments. Famous originally for its wool fabrics, it has shot up into superb quality fabrics which are rich in cashmere. One of the first mills to

accept that men and women will wear the same cloth, it has concentrated its production on satisfying the sophisticated, international globetrotter. Its managing director, John Harrison, claims without hesitation that 90 per cent of the company production goes abroad, either in direct export as cloth, or made into garments in Britain, or sold to tourists at the magnetic tourist traps of London, Windsor, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Oxford.

Accepting that the demand is for lighter fabric, John Harrison points out that inevitably this reduces the chances for fancy textures. The demand today is, he says, for under-design. The textures are unobtrusive, the colours cool, like putty and sludge, and the stripes and checks almost invisible from across the room. Twenty per cent of Johnstons’ production is between 300 and 330 grammes per metre. John Harrison expects this percentage to increase. Exporting over more than 99 per cent of their production is William Halstead of Bradford. Echoing Johnstons’s recognition of “underdesign,” Halsteads too go for subtlety and understatement. Its stripings and colours are so undemonstrative that if they were not woven in wool they would be immediately classified as shirtings. Peter Halstead describes the look as “old traditional, but new.” It is very English: stone colours, grey, blue and green, with touches of honey and bran. Specialists in mohair blended with worsteds, Halsteads sells its lightest fabrics for Japanese suit production. The Japanese have demanded lighter and lighter suitings, so for them the mill has 180/190 grammes, though the average demand worldwide is for 250/280 grammes. Halsteads more traditional fabric — 45 per cent mohair and 55 per cent wool — runs at 380/400 grammes per metre. Again, the colours are delicate; watercolour versions of smoke and the mists that rise from the moors. There are immediate advantages in these comparatively heavier fabrics. The wool allows the texture to be more evident and the handle to be less slippery. The shiny mohair surface, almost reflective, is lost in the woolliness.

South of Halsteads, at Huddersfield, are Moxons, part of the great Allied Textiles Group. The managing director, Colin Wood, has a happy way with words, and indeed his mill

has a happy way with wool. Colin Wood boasts that Moxons produce some of the most expensive fabric in the world. His company specialises in small quantities, using the finest materials. Moxons is almost a craft industry, but highly sophisticated. It produces a connoisseur’s cloth, a pure wool that handles like cashmere, but it is better than cashmere because it is without the soapiness that is inseparable from the goat. Moxons use Lumb’s super 100 s Huddersfield worsted yarn; yarn from Tasmanian tops; from flocks descended from Spanish stock. Each season’s buy is fed into production over a three year period so any seasonal variation is accommodated with ease.

Colin Wood accepts that his competition is worldwide. He says that every where there are people who can spin and weave, what he is making has two extra elements — quality and design. The quality is individual and the design a supplement to it.

Today, in design terms, Colin Wood agrees that Moxons is treading water, and his fabric have water colour backgrounds. However, when it comes to selling, he is treading the world.

In the recent harsh environment ‘closure was frequently the reward for investment.’

A major, and surprising market is Italy. Italy has the world’s top clothing manufacturers and they use the equivalent fabric. If Colin Wood has any regrets it is not about his company, but about the decreasing demand for hand tailoring, and the apparent inability of the British clothing industry to adapt itself to the new international standard of make. He would like to work with British clothiers, but his failure there is balanced against a healthy export order book and growing international admiration. Mark Bedforth of Taylor and Littlewood, also in Huddersfield, has an identical complaint against the British clothier.

“Too few factories know how to make up the cloth we produce and sell so easily abroad. “We have to be careful who we sell to. We have to be certain that they know what they are doing. We

want to sell without worry,” he points out. Taylor and Littlewood adjust its ranges for each country. In the United Kingdom demand in terms of weight has dropped from 480/500 gramme to 360/380. In West Germany the buyers usually choose around 360/380, but talk of adapting their clothing production to go lighter, probably around 240/260. The company produces very light, open weave crepe for Japanese halflined blazers. The same fabric 100 per cent wool, is also suitable for women’s wear, but although admired, is considered too expensive.

It looks as if men are still paying a premium for quality cloth that women are reluctant to match. With Continental and Far Eastern manufacturers demanding the quality and paying the price, the company is happy to respond. Taylor and Lodge also does an international circuit. It produces a fully machine-washable 100 per cent wool cloth (160/180 gramme) for Egyptian thobs — the tentlike overdress worn by men on cool days. It also markets a 100 per cent worsted spun cashmere, expensive but durable, in Japan. The company is responsive to its specialist clients. A lightweight (310/340 gramme) fabric in silk and lambswool, flecked with cotton is available in 20 different designs, in 40 to 50 colourways, and the company will accept orders for single pieces. It also produces 100 per cent wool worsteds that are coloured and patterned like tweed but feel like sin. And for winter comes a range in the grey and browns of Jacobs wool. In addition there is a

washable worsted that is very fine to handle but crease-resistant because of a lightly applied resin. Cool to wear, creases drop out overnight. But it would be false to suggest that all the leading mills are over-concerned with foreign markets. John Foster, for example, is a supplier to Marks and Spencers. Its mohair suitings, worsteds and polyester/worsteds sell not only in the United Kingdom, but around the world.

The company’s newly-de-veloped wool, mohair and silk mixture, it describes as classic. However, this is yet another example of British mis-statement, modesty rather than the wish to deceive being their motive. This new fabric looks like Thai silk. The colours are delicately held in balance, a medley of discords which are so finely spaced that the over-all effect is harmonious.

Having a field day with history is Fox Brothers, from the west of England, It proclaims that history is repeating itself, and display a colour range dated 1773. How historic they are, though, is debatable.

In this decade the company supplies Marks and Spencers, and offers a range of flannels that seduce the eye and the hand. In 1773 through till the second half of this century the flannels weighed 550 to 590 gramme. Now they have been pared to 370 to 460. Not so thick, but equally colourful.

The delight of flannel is in its motley. Over-all it has a colour, but that colour comes from the diversity of tones that are married, sometimes incongruously. The tones are then deepened and clouded by the milling that adds a rich down across the surface.

In these two areas it would be difficult to find a mill that approaches, let alone surpasses, this one. I want to end by saying that the British are truly eccentric.

This particular industry, or part of the textile industry, is under severe pressure. They should, one would think, bellow their virtues to the world. Instead, they shrink like violets from the rough and tumble of the market place. If a buyer comes to Britain it is a problem to find fabric of this quality and design. Even the British have problems finding it. A survey conducted on behalf of the National Economic Development Office found the industry guilty of insufficient innovation in fabric construction and surface effect; insufficient involvement in fashion trends; failure to design targeted ranges; and not presenting their ranges effectively. This surely cannot be a just verdict on the industry’s leaders, the companies I am writing about.

While the British do not exhibit their best to the world at large there is little chance of them increasing their production and sales. On the contrary, if they cannot be more hospitable to their potential clients, more generous in the sharing of their design and development, then the decline referred to earlier must inevitably continue. New Zealand is, in terms of bulk, the largest supplier of wool to the United Kingdom — in 1982, more than a third of all raw wool imports.

To protect his own interests, the New Zealand wool grower must hope to see a bolder sales effort by his customers.