Patrick Grant

The Great British Sewing Bee judge, former Savile Row tailor and founder of Community Clothing talks to Amanda Morison about nature, scything and sustainable fashion

- PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDY HOOK

PATRICK Grant goes through life at quite the clip. Brought up in Edinburgh, he played rugby for Scotland at under-18 and under-19 levels. An injury ended his career but not his love of adrenaline, and after graduating from the University of Leeds in materials science he worked in Vail as a meeter and greeter. The hours weren't long, which meant a lot of time for skiing, plus a free ski pass and early access to the slopes.

Now 53, Grant says he's always had a lot of stamina. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his work ethic, learnt from his father “who on his days off would spend 10 hours digging in the garden”. When at Cookson & Clegg, the Blackburn clothing factory he saved from closure in 2015, Grant gets to his desk at about 7am. He often works 12 hours straight, yet this is nothing compared with the 100 hours a week he packed in a few years ago when running Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons, designing the Hammond & Co range for Debenhams plus writing two books. “My girlfriend wasn't mad keen on the book writing, it's fair to say,” he admits.

Community Clothing, which was launched by Grant in 2016, sells plastic-free clothes sustainably produced in the UK from fabrics made in Britain and designed to last. At its core is a mission to not just help the planet but also communities by creating skilled jobs, and restoring prosperity and pride in towns – such as Blackburn – that were the beating heart of Britain's textiles industry. It's the antithesis of throwaway fashion.

“I wear the same stuff pretty much all the time, obviously with fresh pants and socks,” Grant clarifies. This ethos was behind his second book,