The Beautiful North is an small business making limited edition menswear, including shirts made in England from Lancashire cotton. I was sent a sample to have a look at recently, was impressed by the quality and felt this was a young brand that Grey Fox readers should to look at and support.
Ian Pierce told me something about the brand:
We at The Beautiful North are a small independent clothing range formed a couple of years ago with the main aim of releasing limited edition clothing with each product being individually numbered (e.g. TBN-1, TBN-2, TBN-3 etc). Our ethos was to produce and manufacturer everything possible here in the UK and be in a position to champion other independent companies similar to ourselves and promote the idea of spending money 'organically', choosing where you buy products so that it helps your local economy etc.
We initially started selling t-shirts (not made in the UK) with our designs screen-printed by hand in a converted barn in Wales. With some experience and contacts we continued to expand into sweatshirts which are manufactured here in the UK and again hand-printed in Wales. This winter just gone we continued to grow by expanding our range into hats and scarves (again manufactured here from 100% British wool) which went with great success with the hats selling out in a week and scarves shortly afterwards.
Now, as we enter Spring/Summer '15, we are proud to announce our first shirting range manufactured right here in the UK using 100% Lancashire Cotton. We feel our shirts have been our latest venture that fit into that category. We have worked with a textile manufacturer in Lancashire to ensure we have the right fabric/pattern that we desire.
It was working with this textile manufacturer that really interested us in Lancashire and its 200+ year association with cotton. How in the 19th Century there were 2650 Cotton Mills in Lancashire, employing 440,000 people and producing a peak of 7 billion yards of cloth, 6 billion of these being exported. Then its inevitable industrial decline in the area where rows and rows of terraced houses in a plethora of mill towns act as reminder of what was once a thriving, all-encompassing industry. We felt this provided an important story for us and really fitted into The Beautiful North's image. It also inspired us when putting together a couple of freebies to go with the shirts (copy of the cigarette cards that would often be collected by those workers not long past the turn of the 20th Century).
So all our products apart from our t-shirts are made in the UK which is something we are looking to rectify and are busy speaking to a number of manufacturers to see if they can meet our requirements.
All elements of our clothing are brought back to Merseyside, assembled and then with the assistance of some brilliant local graphic designers, website designers and photographers we've had our own online shop up and running for just over two years.
So, that's a bit about us. Primarily clothing and some blog entries, but we're nice lads.
Please take a look and support this young brand. You can of course find more information on their website: http://www.thebeautifulnorth.co.uk.
