The Ambassador and his wife were in attendance, giving their support to the Uk textile industry. The Ambassador, Mr Uden, also gave a speech, outlining the importance that Britain has in South Korea and that the British made product has a lot of value in the Far East.

Cambridge Members use Timothy Everest as there Design Consultant and he was in attendance. Our group Chairman and one of Sales Directors spoke to him at length about his views on the high quality of product made in the Uk and the bright future the Uk has in manufacturing luxury worsteds for a global market.

Bulmer and Lumb were joined by their agents, D-Vision O, and many of the group’s loyal customers for drinks and canapés. The group chairman, Bill Waterhouse, gave a short speech, outlining that the group was here to stay, supplying some of the world’s best cloth in Japan and around the globe.

The fabrics chosen for this special event are a modern version of our award winning Lumb’s Golden Bale flannel cloth as originally made for H Lesser cloth merchants for their exclusive clients along Savile Row. And a clear cut classic pin stripe, a suitable fabric for an English gentlemen’s wardrobe. After a consultation with Anderson and Sheppard, who are going to tailor the final garment, we decided on a shade of medium charcoal, which is in high demand by some our most discerning customers. The cloth was finished by the group fabric finisher Holmfirth Dyers.

The wool bale will make a total of 27 suit lengths; the remaining 26 will be purchased by members of the global wool industry and all proceeds will be donated to the Royal Flying Doctors Service in Australia.

Please click on the links below to read some of the articles  about this in the media;

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2011/04/16/taylor-and-lodge-make-cloth-for-suits-intended-for-wedding-gifts-for-prince-william-and-kate-middleton-86081-28530328/

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/main-section/yorkshire_company_to_make_suit_fit_for_a_honeymooning_prince_1_3294908

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=606537&vId=2363226&cId=National

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201104/s3202356.htm

]]> http://bulmerandlumb.com/news/?feed=rss2&p=168 0 http://bulmerandlumb.com/news/?p=138&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=prince-charles-visits http://bulmerandlumb.com/news/?p=138#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:26:54 +0000 Edward Waterhouse http://bulmerandlumb.com/news/?p=138

HRH The Prince of Wales recently visited Bulmer & Lumb Group Headquarters at Buttershaw in Bradford, as part of the Campaign for Wool of which he is patron. On arrival, the Prince was greeted by the Group Chairman, Bill Waterhouse & Sales Director, David Lister.

After meeting the rest of the board of directors, the Prince was escorted on a tour of the site by Group Managing Director, David Midgley. As Bulmer & Lumb is the only textile manufacturer remaining in the UK which processes wool from raw material to finished fabric, this included top dyeing, combing & weaving.

The party then returned to the board room, where the Prince viewed samples of the all the products made by Bulmer & Lumb. Gifts of an exclusive Lumb’s Golden Bale Flannel suit length & an Escorial Ladies’ Shawl, manufactured at Taylor & Lodge in Huddersfield, were presented to him by Jacob Midgley.

On the 21^st and 22^nd October our Sales Director, William Halstead, presented the Taylor and Lodge brand to the Chinese market.  Starting with an interview session with a large group of Chinese media, followed by a preview of the CBN TV documentary filmed during September at our Huddersfield site.  The 22^nd involved presenting the Taylor and Lodge collection to the Wenzhou Garment Makers followed by one to one meetings with potential customers.

The Bulmer and Lumb Group is committed to Gold Woolmark, and since the initiative was announced, has produced a new range of Lumb’s Golden Bale cloths, seeking inspiration from the Taylor & Lodge archives, which date back to 1883. The new range is made from the finest merino wools sourced from Australia, dyed, combed and then spun into yarn in Bradford, finally woven and finished in Huddersfield. Taylor and Lodge and Lumb’s Golden Bale is a combination which guarantees quality. Modern weaving and finishing machinery alongside age old craft skills ensures that Huddersfield cloth remains at the pinnacle of fine worsted cloth manufacture.

The Bulmer and Lumb Group has joined the Campaign for Wool with its patron HRH The Prince of Wales. The Campaign brings together an alliance of farmers, manufacturers and retailers, with the aim of educating the consumer of the benefits and versatility of using wool. For further details on the Campaign please visit www.campaignforwool.org

Each month in the Knowledge, Twist outlines in an easy-to-understand way the properties, benefits and uses of some of the world’s most desirable luxury fabrics, yarns and fibres. Here, Robert McQuillan outlines the provenance and outstanding quality of Lumb’s Golden Bale cloth, and explains why demand for this fabric is growing among discerning consumers.

As luxury consumers yearn more and more for products that offer authenticity, originality and unique craftsmanship, here at Taylor & Lodge, a world-renowned weaver of high-end cloths based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire,UK, we are finding that interest in the heritage and provenance of luxury fabrics is growing more than ever. Our Lumbʼs Golden Bale qualities are receiving particularly strong attention at present, and we are constantly receiving enquiries about the story behind this exquisite cloth.

Lumbʼs Golden Bale is an internationally recognised standard for worsted cloth of exceptional quality – the fabrics are created only using the best wools available. A Super 100ʼs cloth of 18 microns in weights of 280-350 gms, Lumbʼs Golden Bale is a relatively heavy fabric,easy to cut and make up, and has a look that is strongly associated with Savile Row.

The story of Lumb’s Golden Bale began more than 50 years ago. Joseph Lumb & Sons, which, along with Taylor & Lodge, is part of the Bulmer & Lumb Group, has long been known as a processor and spinner of fine quality yarn, and began to import Australian and South African Merino wool from 1870 onwards, establishing an early reputation for the silk-like quality of its yarns. Joseph Lumb’s buying agents began visiting the Australian auctions, personally selecting bales of extra fine Merino wool. To maintain Joseph Lumb’s high standards of quality, usually only one and a half bales of wool were sorted each day.

Shortly after World War II, as an incentive to encourage sheep farmers to produce even better quality wool, Joseph Lumb chairman Teddie Lumb introduced the Golden Bale Medal, awarded annually to the farmer whose wool achieved the desired gossamer quality and luxurious appearance for Joseph Lumb that year. Teddie Lumb was acknowledged as one of the wor|d’s most experienced and discerning judges of fine wools.

It was at this point that, here at Taylor & Lodge, we began offering fabrics labelled Lumb’s Golden Bale, woven from wool produced by the winner of the Golden Bale Medal. Today, this dedication to excellence remains, and the Joseph Lumb buying agents personally select bales of extra fine Merino wool to meet our own particular specifications. Parts of the selected fleeces are then blended by skilled sorters for combing and spinning into a fine yarn of consistent quality. The Lumb’s Golden Bale top-dyed yarn is dyed in Bradford and spun in Huddersfield, under carefully-controlled conditions to ensure a more uniform yarn with superior performance characteristics. The yarn is then used to weave the Lumb’s Golden Bale fabrics, and only these cloths are entitled to be branded Lumb’s Golden Bale as a guarantee of their unique quality.

We can produce a pure Lumb’s Golden Bale for suitings in classic colours of black, navy and grey, or blend the Golden Bale yarn with Super 150′s or Cashmere for something a little bit more special. We can also produce coating fabrics in weights of 500-700 gms, in a flannel quality or as a clear cut.

Lumb’s Golden Bale has traditionally been used as a winter fabric because of its weight, but we can produce cloth to meet customers’ individual specifications. We have recently created a plain weave fabric for summer for a customer in Japan, and the results were very successful.

Recently, we have seen a surge in demand for Lumb’s Golden Bale cloth, especially in Japan, where customers are always looking for something different. The fabric provides individuality as well as being a talking point and our Japanese customers appreciate the story of its heritage, combined with its superior quality. We provide special woven labels in the purple associated with Lumb’s Golden Bale, featuring the Golden Bale and Taylor & Lodge branding, to confirm the fabric’s authenticity and quality. We also produce booklets in both English and Japanese, which enable sales staff at tailors and retailers offering Lumb’s Golden Bale fabric to explain the benefits of the cloth, and the exacting standards of production, to the consumer.

Lumb’s Golden Bale is also well-known throughout Europe. This season, we have had a sample order from Hugo Boss for a 50% Lumb’s Golden Bale / 50% Super 150’s flannel, in a large glen check in beige and white for suiting, and a birdseed in black and white with a yellow overcheck for jacketing. Hugo Boss has also enquired about a special Taylor & Lodge garment label to reinforce the history behind the product, which will be the first time Hugo Boss has featured Taylor & Lodge branding.

In the UK, several Savile Row tailors have used lumb’s Golden Bale fabric for many years. Richard James, one of the new breed of Savile Row tailors, has purchased lumb’s Golden Bale for the last two winter seasons, using the fabric for suits that are modern yet classic.

For us, the objective of maintaining the manufacture of Lumb’s Golden Bale isn’t to achieve bulk sales, as there is only a limited volume of the yarn produced each season.

However, we are in the early stages of exploring new markets such as China and Russia, which I think could hold great potential for this unique luxury product.

Taylor & Lodge in The Yorkshire Post.

There’s a widely held feeling that the Yorkshire textile industry is no more – mills closed, workers laid off, production transferred to Asia. Dead and buried in other words.

No-one could miss the fact that much of it has vanished from the landscape of West Yorkshire, especially in Bradford, the one-time wool capital of the world.

Many mills remain, but have been turned into something else. Fifty years ago, 140,000 people worked in them. Today, the figure for textiles is down to about 2,000. The real decline set in during the early 1960s and a historian of the industry describes what has happened since as a catalogue of woe.

This may be true of the mass market. But Yorkshire never lost its footing in the top-of the-range niche. In the 1950s, Huddersfield cloth was renowned as the finest in the world.

Today, a slimmer, fitter, more upmarket version of the industry has emerged from the wreckage with something worth shouting about. To get a proper hearing they needed a louder regional voice and at last they have one. Eleven mills from across Yorkshire have been given the opportunity to show off their best in a dramatic in-store display at Harvey Nichols in Leeds that runs until the summer.

Their fabrics can be found covering display shelves, draped down the stairwell and creating changing-room curtains. Even chairs have been upholstered in Yorkshire woollen fabrics while cosy throws have been draped on chairs in the outdoor cafe. Store designer Andy Berrington has also created displays with lengths of fringing, swatches of fabric, lengths of yarn and even binary pattern cards.

The idea of bringing the mills together to market their wares was the brainchild of Suzy Shepherd and Carolyn Lord. They are the founders of Leeds Fashion Works, a group of professionals dedicated to raising the profile of the area by coming up with eye-catching fashion and retail ideas.

Discovering behind the old Yorkshire woollen textiles image a vibrant and dynamic industry, they decided this was worth celebrating. “One of our objectives has been to dispel the belief that the Yorkshire textiles industry has died and to highlight the amazing international success of the high quality products that our mills now specialise in,” says Carolyn Lord.

Working with individual mills they came up with a collective brand – Yorkshire Textiles. Coordinating it is Jonathan Dyson, president of the Bradford Textile Society, who says: “As far as I’m aware, this is the first time there has been this sort of coming together. The Yorkshire mills have become more aware of the need for marketing in recent years because the market is just so much more competitive.” A chance meeting with Harvey Nichols’s general manager, Brian Handley, made it happen.

Some of the mills go back a long way. In the case of Bower Roebuck in the Holme Valley, the date on the stone of what used to be a finishing house (where the washing, cutting and pressing part of the job was carried out) says 1779.

In those days, water was the key. The abundance of it tumbling down the steep valley sides gave them free power and its wonderful softness brought out the best from the fruit of the looms. Good water, good land and lots of sheep were the geographical advantages which helped give Yorkshire textiles domination. The human ones were inventiveness, enterprise and determination.

The phenomenal decline of the industry was down to cheap imports. But complacency and a lack of innovation also played their part. Bradford entrepreneur Jonathan Silver, who came from a textiles background and studied them, spent part of the 1980s looking over mills that were all washed up. He discovered in some of them that the machinery which the last shift had switched off not long before had been installed in the 1900s.

Silver eventually bought a derelict mill for himself, a prodigious Victorian palace of business whose presence spoke of the magnificence of Yorkshire textiles and its bosses. His revival of Salts Mill and the subsequent elevation of the model village of Saltaire surrounding it to World Heritage site status was a singular private enterprise achievement. But the late Mr Silver’s storming success at Salts which has given it a national profile, had nothing to do with wool textiles.

In Leeds, the oldest textile mill, Hainsworth, is still in the same business. Tom Hainsworth, who is part of the fifth generation of his family to run it, says moving with the times is essential to survival. “Innovation is the lifeblood of any business creating a future.”

Hainsworth makes a wide range of things, from fire-resistant textiles to the cloth for the uniforms worn by the sentries outside Buckingham Palace and high quality wall coverings used in the home of the boss of Microsoft, Bill Gates. And how’s this for diversity? Hainsworth recently launched the first ever woollen coffin. They describe it as affordable, sustainable product that is already being exported throughout Europe and America.

Others in the exhibition include Alfred Brown, Arthur Harrison, Edwin Woodhouse, John Cavendish, John Foster, Joseph H Clissold, Abraham Moon, Savile Clifford and Taylor & Lodge. For all these mills, survival has come through diversification as well as a core business of quality textiles. Trading at the top end of the market has brought custom from the likes of Aquascutum, Burberry, Gucci, Prada – client lists read like a fashion Who’s Who.

Savile Row comes up in force from London to the Holme Valley to Bower Roebuck to see for themselves the manufacture of cloth there for trousers with very deep pockets. One has crushed diamond fragments incorporated into the yarn. Another has lapis lazuli woven into it. And how about 22 carat gold? Certainly sir, no problem, when would you like it?

Robert McQuillan of Taylor and Lodge in Huddersfield (makers of the cashmere and mohair fabric for a Tom Ford suit worn by 007 Daniel Craig in the film Quantum of Solace) thinks it’s about time Yorkshire textiles were celebrated on their home turf. “Wherever I travel in the world, people are aware of Yorkshire textiles, yet at home we are not so well known,” he says. “Some 25,000 people go through the doors of Harvey Nichols each week and I’d like to think that many of them will now be made more aware of Yorkshire textiles.”

Brian Handley says that what initially excited him about the project was that so many of the fashion houses represented at Harvey Nichols are supplied by mills practically on their Leeds doorstep.

“Visiting the mills was a real eye-opener,” he says. “Each one produces something completely different. We didn’t want this project to cost the mills vast amounts of money, so we’ve actually used things in our store display, such as offcuts and waste products.”

One example are the lengths of green felt with punched-out circular shapes. The circles themselves are used in Steinway pianos, but the by-product delighted Brian’s in-store team so much that they’ve used swathes of it to decorate the store.

Brian Handley notes that Government funding for marketing initiatives is meagre compared with other countries. Yet in Italy – our main competitor in the production of top-end woollen fabrics – there is huge investment in marketing and infrastructure.

It’s generally reckoned the Italians are streets ahead of us and that broadly speaking they have succeeded because they kept the mills together as family businesses. Over there, family tradition is the basis of success – along with the ambition that their cloth should remain the finest in the world. Dividends to the shareholders are not the sole yardstick of success. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that it has taken people not directly involved in the cloth trade to have the inspiration for this exhibition. Maybe as long-time competitors, the Yorkshire mills can’t see the wood for the trees.

“Perhaps it has taken an outsider to see that there is a bigger picture, to realise how much the mills have achieved and how important what they are doing is for British industry,” says Carolyn Lord of Leeds Fashion Works,

Has this old-school industry now woken up to the fact that marketing is essential in the long-term?

Jonathan Dyson says: “I think the mills have really enjoyed this project and want to do more of the same. They focus a lot more on marketing now after what in some ways has been a slow start compared to other industries.

“When you look at equivalents, in Italy for example, there has been an enormous government contribution compared with the UK.”

The Leeds exhibition also has turn-of- the-century archive books from the Sunnybank Mills Textile Archive, one of the most complete textile archives in Yorkshire. The exhibition also has a new commission by sculptor Peter Maris, whose stone and anodysed aluminium sculpture is based upon a suit jacket on a coat hanger. Leeds Fashion Works also has educational ideas to bring in students.

The long-term significance of this project is that it has led to a new spirit of collaboration that should help the mills face up to world competition. As those guardsmen wearing Leeds cloth on their backs will know, there’s strength in numbers on the battlefield.