Is buying British clothes enough?

A collection of climate stories mostly

Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash, Albania.

Having time to reflect and breathe a bit since selling our business, I’ve had a chance to look at life and ways in which I might like to live the rest of mine with a lighter touch. This has become more appealing because of the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is happening and quicker than expected.

Cop 28 in Dubai in November, where international focus returns to the environment, is beginning to look like a sick joke before it’s begun. The United Arab Emirates, the country hosting is a leading oil and gas producer. Sultan Al Jaber, who will be presiding, happens to be the chief executive of the country’s national oil company which has big plans for production expansion.

Despite this hypocritical stupidity, it doesn’t stop me thinking about my circumstances and what I can do to make a difference.

But what does doing the right thing look like?

I’m conscious that three children might not have been the most environmentally friendly of contributions. But with birth rates in England and Wales lower than they’ve ever been since records began, coupled with an increasingly ageing population, it’s easy to argue that a different sort of crisis is brewing. 

A shortage of people is certainly more significant, if we continue with our current trajectory of growth, materialism and freedom of choice at any cost. 

Unfortunately, I expect that course to remain set, with a hellbent determination to satisfy all our needs, regardless of the environmental price for a few more generations at least. Our predicament was nicely summed up recently by a video which went viral. It’s a crab, still alive, eating sweetcorn in a stew. You can see the liquor it’s comfortably sitting in starting to bubble around the edges. 

If sense eventually prevails, the problem will by then have multiplied in size and complexity, threatening the very existence of everything.

Too bleak and dark? Perhaps.

One action I’ve taken is to buy British wherever I can, especially when it comes to clothes, an industry responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. As Mrs H will confirm, I’m not a huge consumer of high fashion and usually wear clothes for years rather than a season. So the idea of finding British retailers with little to no brand credibility that no one has ever heard of was an entirely comfortable experience. 

I’ve managed to be partially successful. Footwear has been relatively straightforward without needing to rely on quintessential British brands like Churches and Loake, well known for their traditional brogues which might last as long as your membership of a gentleman’s club. The rich continue to be loyal supporters of British artisans, with handmade shoe purveyors such as James Taylor & Sons, Crockett & Jones, continuing to thrive. 

More useful for me have been brands like Grenson, Goral and Norman Walsh, where I’ve bought several pairs of everyday trainers, for a similar price to a pair of Nikes. It comes with other benefits; no child labour issues, dictatorship politics or shipping half way around the world. Everything is made in far away cities like Sheffield, Bolton and Northampton.

I’ve been less successful with golf shoes though. The closest I could get to a sensibly priced UK manufacturer was Ecco, a Danish brand which make their very comfortable shoes in Portugal. They’ve unfortunately worn out after a year. Ecco also took the dubious decision to keep their 250 Russian stores open after the illegal invasion of Ukraine.

My only course of action now, is to buy second hand, nearly new or if I’m lucky, never been worn. I can’t count for the provenance of the shoe, but at least I’m recycling.

Around 300,000 tonnes of clothing end up in household bins every year, with 20% going to landfill, the rest is incinerated. Is this because the British buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe? We do by the way. Two tonnes of clothing are bought every minute in the UK, which explains why we wear 60% more clothing than we did 15 years ago. 

Similar to my shoe experience, I’ve been buying British made clothes for several years now. It was a real pleasure to discover Peregrine Clothing, a business which was founded by Thomas Glover in 1796. I’m sure they must have been through some tough times, but they’re still here, eight generations later with another Tom Glover running the company. They have a shop in Regents Street, London and a good web site.

Ethical Consumer recently sent me an article on ethical clothing brands which got me thinking further. Buying new, even British new is not necessarily as helpful as it might sound.

The UK clothing industry (which includes all those fast fashion retailers manufacturing in Asia) has an estimated annual carbon footprint close to that of all 28 current EU states combined – at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 yearly. 

To really help the environment, we need to reduce the amount of new clothes we buy and shop second-hand a lot more often. 

That’s easy to say, but how practical is that? Is it even possible to have a great retail experience in the vintage, second-hand, nearly-new market?

If Sarah Fewell’s, Identity Party retail site is anything to go by, I don’t see why not.

Like many good ideas, Fewell who was studying for a politics degree at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time, enjoyed browsing charity shops. When she found a really nice dress which wasn’t for her, she bought it anyway, before promptly selling it on Depop. The buying and selling continued. After university she realised that she didn’t want to do anything else and now her love of vintage has become a successful business. 

My searches so far haven’t found anything as stylish and appealing as Identity Party, which is for female shoppers. The lack of professional photography means nothing looks particularly appealing or fresh.

I need gym shorts. I’ve already bought one pair from Sole Ambition, another British manufacturer with ethics. It’s a lot more appealing than ploughing through the sad pictures of long basketball shorts in garish colours on Oxfam’s web site, wondering how clean they really are?

I know, don’t be daft, but it’s exactly why we don’t buy second hand. There’s also what I’ll call the TKMaxx effect. In poorer times, I would troll up and down their aisles of clothes, returning home with a real bargain which barely got worn because it wasn’t quite the right colour or size. 

They do have a good business model though and should be commended for their Give Up Clothes For Good campaign which has been running since 2004, helping Cancer Research UK raise £40m.

As I mentioned previously, there is an awareness at least on this side of the Atlantic that fast fashion is not good. It’s also not difficult to find brands which are pushing sustainable, quality and investment as key motives to buy. 

A less is more approach will eventually be the only way which humanity can hope to avoid the fate of the hungry crab.