Great British Sewing Bee judge's bid to return Wales' underwear making heyday

Did you know the Wonderbra was once made in Wales?

In fact, until the 1990s, the south Wales valleys had a thriving underwear making industry.

Now, Patrick Grant, best known for being a judge on the BBC's The Great British Sewing Bee, has launched a campaign to reignite large-scale production in the area.

Welsh stars, including singer and radio presenter Wynne Evans and comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean, have joined Patrick to be photographed in their pants for the Hello Boyos! campaign, a nod to Wonderbra's Hello Boys campaign from 1994.

Patrick, who founded clothing brand and social enterprise Community Clothing in 2016, said he was aiming for "full-scale production of a range of underwear for men and women, make use of all those amazing skills, keep the tradition of making underwear in south Wales - which not a lot of people know about - and create important jobs in a town that, frankly, really needs it."

Patrick said once the company has secured pre-orders for 10,000 pieces of underwear it would start full-scale underwear production at the former AJM Sewing factory in New Tredegar, Caerphilly county.

Patrick's social enterprise, which works to preserve and expand jobs in UK clothing production, is already working with 42 factories across the UK, predominantly in areas with a strong textile heritage.

For Patrick, it is personal.

"My grandfather worked in the textile industry... I spent my entire childhood watching factories close and I've seen what the loss of a job does to individual people - jobs are more than just about money, jobs are about a sense of personal pride, they're about dignity, they're about actually having a purpose in life."

About five years ago he began looking to find a factory to make underwear.

"Somebody said to me, 'there is one underwear factory left in south Wales and of course I got on the train'," he explained.

When, in 2001, Gossard, the maker of Wonderbra, closed its factory in Pontllanfraith, Caerphilly county, a member of staff bought the machinery, moved it to another factory in New Tredegar and set up AJM, a small production with 60 staff.

They won the Agent Provocateur contract but the luxury lingerie retailer moved its production in 2018 and the company ceased production.

Since 2018, luxury lingerie brand, Edge o' Beyond, has been manufacturing underwear from the site, employing 12 machinists.

"I think we were looking at well over 2,000 skilled seamstresses employed amongst those six factories," said Patrick.

"There's still a core of brilliant seamstresses living in and around the south Wales valleys. Some of them are still doing little bits of ad hoc work, some sampling work, some small production runs."

The company plans to make high-quality, size-inclusive underwear for men and women using 100% organic and single farm cotton fabric knitted in Leicestershire.

Every item will be hand cut and sewn by seamstresses at the New Tredegar factory and will be priced from £9 to £15.

But with far cheaper underwear widely available, is this something people can get behind in a cost of living crisis?

"The quality of our everyday clothes is now really very poor," said Patrick.

"We know it's not the cheapest, but we think it is relatively affordable, but the quality is amazing, so it should last you at least twice as long, if not three or four times as long."

He said a big change was needed in the industry as a whole.

"Fundamentally, we have to rethink our approach to a lot of the things we buy," he said.

"We've got to somehow find a way for people to buy fewer things, but better things and have those things made locally, so that all of that money goes back into the local economy."

He is passionate about returning manufacturing to the UK.

"We've gone from being a country that makes a lot of stuff to being a country that makes almost nothing, importing almost everything we need," he said.

"It's low quality, it's made using dirty power on the other side of the world, it's got a carbon cost, it's got a human cost, it's got a societal cost and we have to change that."

Patrick said his plans for the factory were greeted warmly when he visited New Tredegar to do some filming for the campaign.

"Everywhere we stopped and got our camera out people came out and were like... 'oh, my granny used to work in a factory'... everyone was delighted that something kind of positive was happening in the town."

He is positive for the future of the industry in Wales.

"Fingers crossed we'll be making underwear in Wales for decades to come."

Correction 18 September 2023: The story has been amended to reflect that there is already one company manufacturing underwear in New Tredegar