Fashion, read slowly
A trench made in 2019 by a two-person workshop in Northampton has been copied by four high-street chains and one luxury house. The original still sells out. We found out why.
The workshop is a converted shoe factory on the edge of Northampton, and on the day we visit there are exactly two people in it. Ellen Price cuts; her brother Sam sews. Between them they make eleven coats a week, and have done since the spring of 2019.
The coat has no name. On the website it is listed as "Trench, 4th version", and costs £640. Last October it sold out in a day. By Christmas, near-identical copies were hanging in four high-street chains at a quarter of the price.
The copies get the silhouette right and everything else wrong. The original uses a 2/2 twill gabardine woven in Lancashire, with a storm flap cut on the bias so it lies flat after a year of wear. The copies use polyester blends that shine at the elbow after a month.
You can copy a shape in a week. You can't copy the six years it took to stop the collar curling.
Price says the coat has changed four times since the first version, each time because a customer sent one back with a note. The pocket moved two centimetres. The lining lost a panel. The belt got shorter, because nobody ties it anyway.
A luxury house has asked to buy the pattern. Price has said no twice. The waiting list for the spring batch is 340 names long, and she has no plans to hire a third pair of hands.
Clara Voss
Editor of Hemline. Clara writes the long reads and looks after the Trends section.
Stories like this one, five pieces worth the money, and one trend we would skip. 12,800 readers open it before breakfast.
