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Fashion designer Patrick Grant on his love of Edinburgh
‘We were strictly forbidden from playing football... but hailes, a far more dangerous game, was deemed fine’
Idon’t get to come up to Edinburgh as much as I’d like these days. For the last ten years I have worked an 80-hour week and there still never seems to be enough time in the day. Now I have Savile Row bespoke tailor Norton & Sons, menswear line E. Tautz, Debenhams tailor Hammond & Co. and I do BBC Two’s The
Great British Sewing Bee as well as consulting work. I’m busy all the time, but I am a naturally energetic person and I love what I do.
I was born in the Western General Hospital and grew up in Morningside, on Hermitage Drive. My bedroom looked south, across Mortonhall tennis courts and to the Braid Hills and the Pentlands.
The Braid Hills were my stomping ground and my friends and I would be out from 7am until 9pm. We’d just mess about building stuff and making dens and probably getting into trouble. It was an amazing place and we knew every corner of every bush, park and tree. My mum still lives there, only 100 yards down the road from the house I grew up in.
I remember the Scottish rugby team used to stay at the Braid Hills Hotel the night before an international match. On the morning of the game, their bus would go down Braid Road, right past my house, and we’d always go and stand at the end of the garden and wave them off. Most didn’t wave back, but some did.
The night before my first day at South Morningside Primary School I decided to give myself a haircut. It wasn’t very successful, I had a sort of mullet thing going on. I think I was generally disruptive throughout school. My mum has kept a report card that says, ‘Patrick is the insti-
gator of all classroom disputes’. Luckily, she has a pretty good sense of humour.
When I went to Edinburgh Academy I was always in trouble and I often had to spend the day alone with the head of discipline, Mr Evans, who taught chemistry. It was not nice. If we were really bad he’d beat us with a clacken, which was like a big wooden spoon.
At the end of term, we played a game called hailes in the front yard with these clackens. It was a bit like shinty but with far fewer rules – anything went. There would be so many bloodied faces and broken bones, but I love traditions like that. It’s funny how we stick to these old traditions. We were strictly forbidden from playing football in the front yard of the school, but hailes, a far more dangerous and disruptive game, was deemed absolutely fine due to its ancient origins.
We had games every day and would walk past the Botanic Garden on our way from Henderson Row to the playing fields at Arboretum Road. I’ve always loved it there and used to peer over the wall. I find it very therapeutic to just sit amongst beautiful trees, even on a miserable wet day. I have always liked the idea of gardening and even had an allotment when I lived in Oxford, but I never seemed to have the time.
I was one of the tallest in my year and played every sport going. I was good at rugby and got one cap for Scotland under-19s. I played flanker that day, but I normally played number eight. It was against Wales and annoyingly we lost. Our kicker had an off day because he had a new pair of boots.
I also played with the Edinburgh Wanderers and sat on the bench with Gregor Townsend. On Sundays we would play on the back pitches at Murrayfield, and after international days we had great fun going up into the stadium to see what people had left behind in the stands – we would find all sorts of things!
It’s funny how patriotic Scottish rugby supporters are. In all other sports I’m happy to support England, unless they are playing us of course, but in rugby I can’t do it. I’d rather see anybody but England win.
I didn’t play much football growing up so
‘I find it very therapeutic to sit amongst beautiful trees, even on a miserable wet day’
I’m neither a Hearts nor Hibs fan, but I’m always delighted for whoever wins. That cup final was quite something. I was so pleased for Hibs – I’ve got lots of friends who support them and after waiting for 114 years, they certainly deserved it.
My mum thought of clothing in terms of quality, durability and longevity and I grew up with this impression too. At E. Tautz we make clothes with great materials we know can endure. I like clothes that get better with age – we know if you wash it 50 times it will still be great and we use an incredibly durable seam to ensure this. It’s more expensive to sew it this way, but we’re lucky that we have customers that understand the difference between this and a cheap overlock seam. E. Tautz is a small company and we take great pride in our ability to engineer really good quality clothing.
The problem we face today is that many people in Scotland have stopped wanting to buy good quality, expensive knitwear. Back in the day you went into a department store, like Marks & Spencer, and would see beautiful quality Scottish lambswool jumpers.
M&S own-brand was phenomenal, made
in Scotland from beautiful quality yarns, but sadly now, they are not. It is this throwaway attitude I am fighting against.
People do actually want to buy good quality clothing but if you want a really good quality British lambswool jumper, it is going to cost you upwards of £80, whereas you can buy an inexpensive polyester jumper knitted in Vietnam for £35.
People don’t think, ‘ I’m going to buy this cheap one, and I‘ll have to buy another one next year, whereas if I buy this one it will last me six years’. People think of clothing very differently today than they did 20 years ago.
Christian Louboutin does our shoes for the show, which is very kind of him. He was a customer and happened to be in the shop as I was moaning about our shoes.
He was like ‘ Ah, we’ll do those for you – don’t you worry!’ So we’ve worked with him for about four years now and he is just brilliant. They have such a great atelier – I will send all sorts of scribbles and they’ll have a look and come back with an idea. Then they make a whole lot of samples and we put them in the collection.
Growing up, my favourite shop in Edinburgh was Corniche on Jeffrey Street. I would save up for months and wait for a sale, or just come and admire the rails of Gaultier and Westwood. I started coming here when I was 14 and I remember being very intimidated at first and felt like I was stepping into a different and unfamiliar world, but it wasn’t long before I was a regular visitor. Corniche was the only place in Edinburgh, and probably Scotland, where you could buy proper designer menswear back then.
Another great shop, which sadly no longer exists, was Flip of Hollywood. It was the size of a supermarket, with miles of jackets and trousers. I used to spend hours and hours trying to find the perfect outfit combination. I’d pull pages out of magazines and take them down there to try and find something similar.
I did a degree in engineering and worked in the industry for about nine years. I went on to do an MBA at the Säid Business School at Oxford University when I was 31.
As I was writing my thesis on the regeneration of luxury fashion brands such as Burberry, I came across an advert in the newspaper for Norton & Sons – it was for sale and I thought it sounded very cool. I couldn’t believe that a Savile Row tailor was on the market and I loved clothes, loved suits, loved handmade stuff, loved great stuff, and loved old brands.
This place was basically all of those things, so I sold my house and my car and I bought the tailor.
‘The problem we face today is that many people in Scotland have stopped wanting to buy good quality, expensive knitwear... it is this throwaway attitude I am fighting’