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In the Scottish countryside, close to the windswept southwest coast, there is a playground for sustainable fashion. Plants are grown that can be turned into natural dyes; rare breeds of sheep are reared for wool to be spun into fine yarns; students can learn about regenerative farming and the benefits of natural versus synthetic fibres; and a textile training centre is dedicated to teaching responsible design and preserving heritage skills.
This is Dumfries House, built in the 18th century originally as the home of the 5th Earl of Dumfries, and now owned by The King’s Foundation — the educational charity set up by King Charles in 1986 to support people to make the most of their local communities and work towards a more sustainable future.
I’m visiting to find out more about The Modern Artisan, a programme that has been run by The King’s Foundation and Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP) since 2019. In the textile training centre, amid the rows of sewing machines, I’m given a sneak peek of the womenswear capsule collection the 2023/24 cohort has produced, which launches on the Net-a-Porter website on 2 September. The collection comprises 13 pieces made by six trainee artisans, including a lounge suit dyed using native heathers from the Scottish Highlands, a black top with intricately smocked sides, and an oversized British wool scarf. The palette is muted, drawing inspiration from nature — including the hills surrounding Balmoral, the King’s estate in the Highlands.
It’s a small but important collection, which YNAP sees as a testbed for some of its wider sustainability and traceability efforts, including using digital IDs in its private label collections, reducing its carbon footprint and sourcing more fabrics locally. “The programme has inspired us and strengthened our knowledge in some key areas,” says Vikki Kavanagh, managing director of Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter. The challenge is how to scale up these learnings in an industry that is no longer built for volume manufacturing.
Boosting Made in UK
The first two editions were split between artisans in Italy and the UK, reflecting YNAP’s anglo-Italian identity (Milan-based fashion e-commerce company Yoox acquired Net-a-Porter, Mr Porter and The Outnet in 2015; today, the combined group is owned by Richemont). This year, it’s a smaller intake, and all of the trainees are based in the UK.
“We felt that this year would be a great opportunity to really advocate for UK manufacturing and design,” Kavanagh explains. “Made in Italy has always had real kudos; anybody, when they think of Italian style, thinks of chic, high-quality silhouettes and high-quality materials. Whereas with Made in UK, I think there’s a misconception of a slight kind of fustiness — that it’s not as sleek. Some of the materials we’re able to produce in this country are of the highest quality, and we are proving with this programme that they are wearable; they are soft and luxurious to the touch.”
It’s been a trying few years for Made in UK, which has been hit hard by Brexit and suffered several blows as a number of British designer brands struggled and Matches collapsed. A wider industry shift towards reshoring has been hindered in the UK by the lack of infrastructure to support high-volume manufacturing and a skills gap that shows no signs of shrinking.
There have also been bright spots: the Victoria & Albert Museum’s blockbuster Chanel exhibition in London, which ran until March, shone a light on the history of Scottish textiles. For Dior’s resort 2025 show in June, held in the gardens of Drummond Castle — 80 miles north of Dumfries House — Maria Grazia Chiuri collaborated with Scottish companies, including Johnstons of Elgin, Esk Cashmere and Harris Tweed Hebrides. In England, knitwear brand John Smedley announced a £4.5 million investment to revive its third-party manufacturing arm in response to growing demand, boosting confidence in Made in UK.
The hope is that The Modern Artisan can build on this momentum. The programme places strong emphasis on British materials and, this year, wool in particular. The oversized scarf I’m shown in the textile training centre was hand knitted using “The King’s Clip”: a new yarn developed from the fleeces of three flocks of sheep kept at Dumfries House, processed by The Natural Fibre Company in Cornwall into yarn, and knitted by Corgi in Wales. The collection also includes two knitwear pieces made in partnership with regenerative yarn and knitwear company Herd.
“When I grew up, we all had wool jumpers. Now we hear about wool getting burned or used for compost,” says Jacqueline Farrell, education director at The King’s Foundation, who began her career in fashion and textiles. “Why don’t we value British wool anymore? Partly because of the way it’s been spun and its history of being used for carpets and scratchy jumpers. But there are many different breeds of sheep in the UK [whose wool] can be spun in different ways and then knitted or woven together to create a usable fashion fabric.”
Recognising that the project is relatively small in scope, Net-a-Porter has also worked with think tank Fashion Roundtable to develop a new open-source mapping tool that aims to make it easier for brands to find and partner with farms, mills and suppliers that use British wool. “We have a handful of mills left, and the once easy-to-navigate farm-to-fibre value chain is difficult to work with,” says Tamara Cincik, founder and CEO of Fashion Roundtable. “If we want to really meet net-zero targets and support local economies, we need to ensure we rebuild broken or fractured domestic supply chains and support local farmers and makers.”
Challenges of scale
Both Kavanagh and Farrell echo John Smedley’s view that demand for Made in UK is growing. “We are meeting [people from the] industry — from luxury to mid-market — all the time, and you can see that there is a growth in the number of partnerships [between brands and UK manufacturers],” says Farrell. Kavanagh adds that the customer response to The Modern Artisan’s first two collections was overwhelmingly positive.
However, significant barriers remain to scaling up UK production. “The biggest challenge is around volumes,” says Kavanagh. “We are a huge organisation, although the volumes of our private labels are quite small compared to the brands we stock wholesale. For us to be able to get the certification that we require for the standard of responsible sourcing and production that we want for our customers, it’s very difficult to marry our production volumes with the mills.”
How is Net-a-Porter navigating this? “We’ve used a lot of secondary materials, so deadstock, for example,” says Kavanagh. “And we have some fantastic relationships with the mills, so we’ve been able to arrive on a quantity and a price that is doable because, of course, we’re also very conscious that we want our customers to be able to access the product.” Farrell says government intervention is needed to truly move the needle on growing the UK’s manufacturing capabilities.
Boosting UK production isn’t the only aim of the project, however, and Net-a-Porter has found ways to use the learnings to make larger-scale changes in how its supply chain operates.
“We’re a bit of a living laboratory for Net-a-Porter and its Infinity strategy,” says Farrell, referring to the retailer’s 10-year sustainability plan, launched in 2020. For example, the first Modern Artisan collection incorporated digital IDs that told each garment’s story and offered post-purchase care guidance for customers. “Those are now used widely through any private label products we produce across the group,” says Kavanagh. Similarly, the artisans work with environmental consultancy Carbonsink to measure the collection’s carbon footprint, the learnings from which are disseminated throughout YNAP.
Creating a pipeline for talent
An important aim of the project is to reposition heritage craftsmanship and the making — not just the designing — of clothes as an aspirational career path. Some 60 candidates from across the UK applied for the current programme, and the six successful trainees underwent nine months of paid training, including working with YNAP’s private label design team at its London HQ and a six-month residency at Dumfries House. To date, the programme has launched the careers of 26 emerging designers and makers.
“I’m doing things now that I didn’t think I was capable of,” says Graeme Bone, who was part of the first edition of The Modern Artisan and continues to work out of Dumfries House. He shows off a selection of handcrafted kilts in bespoke tartans, which he now produces under his own name. “It gave me that grounding in using natural, local resources that are sustainable, and how to source materials properly; checking where they come from and what dyes they use.”
Artisans from the latest edition agree. “The programme taught me about the realities of choosing sustainability when bringing luxury fashion to market,” says Flavia Maria Nistor. “I’ve learned to design using data in order to create outfits that the customers will love for many years to come, about sustainable design practices and batch production, and manufacturing to the highest standards and finishes for luxury.”
“As somebody who wants to start a couture fashion business, learning about small batch production was a great experience for me,” adds Sarah Jane Sleeba. “I learned how to set up production, how to manage it, and how to source materials.” The other artisans in this cohort are: Arielle Uno Ekwang, Daisy Gray, Georgia Wintle and Jessica Horton.
For this edition, a bigger emphasis has been placed on commerciality, Kavanagh says. “They’ve been really challenged this year to create a commercial capsule that meets the audience’s needs and will sell very well. We looked at silhouettes, wearable textures, fits and a colour palette that sits together. The artisans have had to work together to produce something cohesive, as they would do in any commercial environment.”
Any plans for future editions are being kept firmly under wraps. For now, Net-a-Porter’s focus is on maximising the impact of this edition’s collection, both from a consumer engagement and acquisition point of view, as well as implementing any new learnings into its private label production.
Kavanagh hopes the relatively small collection could be part of a much bigger movement. “Changes such as those that John Smedley is making — bringing the manufacturing back in — are fantastic and I think there will be a moment as Made in UK strengthens. Hopefully, this programme will be part of that moment and that charge. We are very proud that we are standing for Made in UK manufacturing.”
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