Patrick Grant launches Community Clothing

By

Cajsa Lykke Carlson

Published
Feb 16, 2016

Patrick Grant, the creative director of UK fashion label E. Tautz, has just launched a new brand with a difference, Community Clothing.

The company is a manufacturers' co-operative that aims to make excellent quality, affordable clothes, while at the same time create jobs for textile workers and support British textile industries.

"In Britain we have a proud tradition of making the finest textiles and clothes. But the British clothing industry faces serious challenges. One of the biggest of these is the seasonality of demand. For several months of every year even the very best British factories are nowhere near full. This can lead to seasonal hiring and firing, or worse still to factory closures," Grant says.

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To combat this, he aims to use this spare factory capacity in the quiet periods to create job opportunities and stability for those in the textile industry, filling factories all year round. The clothes will be made and sold directly to the consumer to cut out wholesale and retail mark-ups.

"Think of Community Clothing as a new form of co-operative, one that exists simply to sustain and create jobs and skills, and to restore pride in our textile making communities," the company states.

Community Clothing will focus on quality everydaywear, including jeans, raincoats and Harrington jackets. Prices start at £49 and the company has launched a Kickstarter to fund the initiative. Production of the pieces will begin in March, and the aim is to begin delivering the pieces in June.

Grant has been E. Tautz' Creative Director since 2009. Last year he won the British Fashion Council and GQ Menswear fund, the UK's biggest menswear prize, which gives the winning designer a £150,000 grant.