A blast from the past

I was literally born into the clothing industry, as a small boy I used to play in the factory offices.

To me, the cloth room was like an Aladdins cave, dozens of rolls of cloths waiting to be cut, rolls of linings in a multitude of colours, boxes and boxes of buttons, special sewing threads stacked in colour order, boxes of white tailors chalk for marking in the cloth. Even small round honey coloured blobs of a hard wax called beeswax. This was used to lubricate hand buttonhole thread.

I also was fascinated by the piles of part made jackets and trousers in the work rooms each waiting for the next stage of production.  How a flat piece of cloth was carefully cut out and individually tailored to fit a stranger’s shape, size and style just from a set of measurements.

There was always a hive of activity and an atmospheric buzz. The thing that puzzled me was why there was so many part made garments in production that were just waiting around. There were tailors stood at tables or sat cross legged doing hand sewing that never seemed to be visible on the finished garments. Rows of noisy sewing machines with machinists sewing pockets, linings, sleeves etc. Steam pressers pressing seams open with clouds of white steam. 

Working conditions in the 1950’s was poor, wages were quite low, but there was a vibrant local community and support for each other. The photo is our factory in 1951

From the production aspect, I thought that there had to be a better way, when I inherited the business in the 1970’s I changed the mind set of our employees to create one of the most modern privately-owned clothing factories in the UK. By this time we had moved to a 30,000 sq. ft single storey factory in Allerton Bywater near Castleford.

In future articles I will explain why change came too late for the UK clothing industry.

See our timeline page on www.alexander-rose.net