CONTENTS
INDULGE textiles to buy, collect or simply admire 11 UTILITY Useful and beautiful objects for the home curated by Polly Leonard. 78 SHOP TALK Jane Audas goes shopping at Re
GLOBAL textiles from around the world 12 MADE IN THE USA Chris Payne captures the textile industry in America today by Grace Warde-Aldam 40 LOOM LARGE Mourne Textiles in Northern Ireland by Eleanor Flegg 64 MOTHER’S DAY The unified style of mother and daughter behind Bon photostory by Kate Edmonson
ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives 48 LIFE-SAVING LACE How lace saved millions during the Irish famine by Niamh McCooey 56 MATERIAL GHOSTS Catherine Bertola finds new ways of thinking about the past by Grace Warde-Aldam 54 ROUTE MASTER NO 4 Clare Lewis, co-author of the Adventure Walks books, has devised a stroll around Bath illustrated by Holly Scholfield 96 SWATCH Favourite Fabric no.34: Moleskin by Sarah Jane Downing, illustrated by Alice Pattullo
ATTIRE critical reporting of fashion trends 32OUT OF FASHION The designer’s role: from maker to storyteller by Lucy Norris 60 SMOCK VALUE The country life of the smock by Dr Oliver Douglas, photographs by Claudia Brooks 28WORK TO RULE Dawson Denim wears the trousers by Bradley Quinn, photographs by Alun Callender 46 LINENOPOLIS Breathing new life into Irish linen by Eleanor Flegg
CONCEPT textiles in fine art 74 FLEXING THE TRADITIONAL Contemporary basketmakers foster form and fluidity by Mary Butcher MBE 70 SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA Ptolemy Mann treads the boards in Alastair Hendy’s Hastings home
INDUSTRY from craft to commerce 20 BLUE COLLAR WORKERS Workwear in 20th century painting by Jane Brocket 26 FROM FIELD AND FACTORY TO FASHION The rise of the “Bleu de Travail" French worker’s jacket by Ed Cummings 37 NEW TALENT, OLD SKILLS Dovecot Tapestry Studio’s Apprenticeship by Jennifer Harper
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femininity by sporting a scarlet blouse peeking out from underneath her boiler suit, accompanied by that fabulous emerald green hairnet. Similarly, John Hutton (1906-78) paints women in wartime making railway carriages and munitions boxes, in a colourful mix of aprons, dungarees, spotted blouses and Rosie the Riveter style headscarves that stand out against the humdrum workcoats worn by men.
These days much more practical, hardwearing, fashion-free kind of workwear is being worn again, this time by a different set of workers. Small companies like Old Town and Waysideflower sell individually made, practical garments such as loose jackets, high-
waisted trousers, waistcoats, and apron dresses in tweed, flannel, drill, serge and cotton prints, snapped up by architects, writers, designers and gardeners alike. Although these professions don’t call for wielding any spanners in the workplace, what they do have is a new style of workear – one that has reached them, in essence, from the canvas. ••• Jane Brocket
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WORK TO RULE Dawson Denim wear the trousers
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Denim is speaking a new language. From denim parachutes to Canadian tuxedos, skinnies to spray-ons and boyfriends to dads, denim trendies are hacking traditional expressions to form new words. But for consumers who want niche designs that become unique to the wearer through use, raw denim is the only term that matters.
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Few brands cut through all the geekspeak as eloquently as Dawson Denim, a niche, Brightonbased brand with a fluid vocabulary of raw denim, classic details and sound ethics. Established five years ago by Scott Ogden and Kelly Dawson, the brand quickly gained a cult following among denim heads interested in selvedge denim or traditional workwear. “We started with some vintage workwear aprons dating back to the 1920s,” Scott remembers. “They inspired us to produce goods with an industrial feel.” The aprons fast became a favourite of speciality coffee shops in Brighton, and orders from coffee roasters, retailers and cafes around Britain and abroad soon followed.
“There weren’t any other high-end selvedge denim aprons on the UK market when we started,” says Scott. “The apron’s cut is practical and the quality of our denim, which we buy from Kaihara Mill in Okayama, Japan, makes them as sustainable as they are hard-wearing.” The apron’s eco principles and ethical messages were a hit with retailers offering fair-trade coffee and organic beans, as they echoed the sustainable values the retailers were committed to. “We only use raw selvedge denim from a mill we know well,” Scott explains.“Japanese law makes it compulsory for mills to recycle water and cut down on processing, making the whole procedure much cleaner. Added to that, the craftsmen are paid a competitive wage and their working conditions are excellent.”
The Okayama region of Japan where Scott and Kelly source their materials has a long history tied up in indigo dyeing. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, manual workers in Japan were forced to wear only browns, blues and greys.This historic law effectively lay the foundation for a huge wealth of indigo dyeing and expert craftsmanship to develop in Okayama, and is the reason why many denimheads (perhaps unknowingly) refer to this entire region as the denim capital of the world.
Playing a valuable and supportive role as part of this sustainable trade industry, Dawson Denim’s initial apron design was reconfigured into nine4
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