Pip Jenkins

John Smedley established in 1784, one of the UK's oldest still running knitwear manufacturers. Defining features of the brand:

-Contemporary look

-Innovative

-Luxury

-Timeless Design

=LONGEVITY

Pip kept referring to herself and colleagues as 'Technical designers', which is essential in the company where design works so intrinsically closely to the factory and production.

In 'Seamless Knitwear- The Design Skills Gap' the article talks about a lack of technically skilled people in the industry mostly due to retirement and redundancy. Exacerbating this is the growing population who perhaps devalues these skills and with a low prevalence of the production industries in the UK this idea of technical work may not appeal to younger generations today. Sayer, Wilson and Challis suggest that:

“one remedy could be to give the growing number of designers a stronger technical grounding”

(Sayer, Wilson, Challis, 2006)

This could mean that there is more scope for employment for those who have broader technical knowledge. It is outlined in the article that many UK universities don’t have the capacity to fully teach this technology. If I can make my technical knowledge a priority for learning this year, I could stand out in the industry as a creative designer but one who has a good technical understanding and grounding. Ultimately improving my employability.

In Pip's lecture, she highlighted that when looking at hiring for JS experience is not a necessity as long as there is a grounding in these technical skills (specifically Illustrator, Apex3, Excel) and an understanding of sustainability. Moving forward, I will focus on the goals of practicing Adobe Illustrator to become proficient and learning more of the possibilities of Apex3-simulations, 3D simulations and garment panels.

Another interesting topic raised in the discussion was:

How can a heritage brand survive and stay relevant?

John Smedley feels like quite a unique and rare company in the fashion and knitwear industry. Having existed and survived for 300+ years whilst achieving the reputation that it has, it proves that it has staying power. They have continually adapted and grown their business model to survive many key events in the from deindustrialisation of the UK, to COVID-19.

The link to the historic industry in the UK makes it feel very important and therefore quite relevant.

A potential challenge is attracting new audiences, and particularly a younger market to support growth. However, I question whether this is a relevant goal for the company. They clearly have a global audience who generates enough profits to sustain the company. The company doesn't rely on pushing the brand out and raising brand awareness, as stated in the lecture they don't pay celebrities or influencers to wear the product. Their reputation speaks for itself and people seek out this brand because of what they are known for. This suggests that there is still a place for heritage brands in the market. Maybe this is because they take up a unique position in the industry. They focus on quality timeless style and quality materials and arguably have been following sustainable practices long before sustainability was such a prevalent topic in the industry.

On the topic of sustainability, the unique example of John Smedley raises another interesting topic about locality within fashion. The made in England brand sets Smedley's apart in the industry but this would have been very common pre-industrialisation but now is very rare. They still rely on imports of material and they do export garments globally but 90% of the production is still on the original site in Lea Mills. This means that the carbon footprint within the production of the garments is much reduced as the processes all take place in one place.