Are your clothes an outward expression of you? Something you cherish and take care of? Or are they a fleeting aspect of your busy life, to be worn for a season then discarded?
There’s no doubt that our choice of clothing is an increasing environmental issue. The United Nations identifies the global fashion industry as the second most polluting industry after the oil and gas sector, responsible for 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Here in the UK, our consumption of clothing means that annually every household produces the equivalent emissions of driving a car for 6,000 miles. And, when it comes to ‘fast’ fashion – garments worn less than five times - produce 400% more carbon emissions than clothes worn 50 times*.
Fed up with seeing the damage caused by something she has loved since the age of 12, Poole-based tailor Gill Marais decided to tackle this issue by educating people about sustainable fashion and doing her bit to stylishly stop the tide of fast fashion.
‘We already have enough clothes to dress the next six generations,’ Gill tells me, with some exasperation. ‘And yet there’s still this idea that we need a new outfit for every event. It must stop.’
It’s four years since Gill started her business Tailoresque in the Longfleet Road in Poole, premises that had been occupied by renowned master tailors H Baldwin & Son since 1926. Started by Harry Baldwin, his son Stanley passed away in 2022 aged 95, three years after his son John, the last trained tailor in the family. John’s brother Norman is now Gill’s landlord. Alongside alterations and repairs, she offers a bespoke design and making services across a range of clothing, including bridalwear, special occasion dresses and gents tailoring.
Born in Bournemouth, Gill grew up in Sturminster Marshall. Clothing has been her passion ever since she took a school assignment to the next level by making full garments instead of sample pieces in needlework classes at Lockyer’s Middle School in Corfe Mullen. Gill studied the subject at O-level and A-level (the only student in school to do so) then took a course in Fashion Design at Bournemouth & Poole College before ‘life happened’ and she immersed herself in raising a family away from her home county.
‘I was very comfortable making my own clothes,’ she says. ‘At youth club discos I used to love knowing that whatever I wore nobody else would have one the same. This was a time when it was all about individuality and looking the part – you could tell so much about someone just from their clothes. These days, people seem happy to look the same because the clothes put out by fast fashion retailers are cheap copies of styles made by high end makers months before.’
Gill believes that this constant churn is a major factor in the climate emergency we are in as the clothes we discard are not recycled. ‘They’re exported and end up in landfill in Africa and South America. Just a small example, there is no commercially viable process for separating cotton, a natural product, and polyester, which is man-made. So, anything that is poly cotton is going to end up in landfill where it will take decades to biodegrade.’
As a mature student Gill gained a BA degree in Costume Construction at the Royal Opera House and, following a change in circumstances that brought her back to her native Dorset, she is now studying an MA in Sustainable Fashion, while running Tailoresque.
‘I’ve got a lifetime of experience, knowledge and skill but I’m still learning,’ she smiles. ‘That’s what I love about working with young people, they keep me on my toes! Together we solve problems – that’s what makers and designers are, we’re problem solvers.’
Gill’s team includes costume design graduate Ellie Stembridge, who specialises in Plastazote foam model making. This is a skill that comes in particularly handy when making clothes for a young client of theirs called Arthur. ‘He loves dressing up,’ Gill enthuses. ‘His mum takes him to Disney and Arthur gets involved in the parades, hence the costumes. The more outlandish the better. Our challenge is to make them without buying anything, so we use scraps, offcuts and lots of imagination. The Plastazote might form the headgear, for instance, then we cover it in fabric and create the costume. We also make them with enough seam to let them out as Arthur grows so he can enjoy wearing them for longer.
‘That’s what costume construction is about – making something that takes account of how it will be used and for how long. We think about movement and giving it room to grow, just as we would if we were making costumes for the stage.’
Alongside Ellie are AUB (Arts University Bournemouth) graduates Lucy King (costume), who does a lot of the bridal work, and Paulo Fernandes (fashion), who focusses on alterations, zips and fastenings.
‘Fashion is all go, whereas costume makers are more considered and take their time. Paolo has learned the old adage of ‘measure twice cut once’ the hard way. But we all work together and learn together, whether that’s in drafting a pattern from scratch, or solving a problem of how to rework a client’s favourite garment so that it fits.
Gill believes that the key is to buy less but buy wisely. ‘If people understand their clothes better and form an emotional connection, they’ll be less inclined to keep buying new.’
She recounts the tale of a client who pitched up with three pairs of £12 trousers from a fast fashion retailer that needed to be altered to fit for a wedding, then was horrified at the cost. ‘Alterations are a skilled job and we had to charge several times what they paid for the trousers, but that’s what it costs,’ she shrugs.
‘Equally, one client asked us to remake her mum’s wedding dress for her own wedding. To see the two of them in the room together for the fitting was so special. It’s a privilege to become part of the story of that wedding dress.’
The latest AUB Costume graduate to join Gill is Klaudia Glebocka. She loves knitwear and has been sharing skills in jumper repair with her colleagues. ‘A client brought in a beautiful Christian Dior sweater that he’d had since the 1980s but the moths had got to it and left a hole. Klaudia researched the exact shade and ply of wool that had been used and carefully knitted a beautiful repair. He was so happy when he came to collect the jumper – he’d found one online that would have cost £1200, so for the price of the repair he went home with a very desirable high-end jumper.’
When it comes to repairing clothes more visibly, Gill says mending can become a badge of honour. ‘If it’s an embroidered patch on a pair of well-loved jeans, or the arm of a jacket, that says you care about your clothes and you’re proud to wear them mended because you care about the planet as well. If, as consumers in the wealthy global north, we demand better quality and buy less, then the fast fashion retailers will lose their market. The price will go up and we can start to tackle this addiction to cheap clothes. The other part of that equation is the shockingly low wages paid to the factory workers that make those clothes – it’s criminal.’
However, there are pockets of good news for ‘slow’ fashion advocates such as Gill. Pressure is growing for countries such as Ghana and Chile to stop importing used clothing from the global north on an industrial scale. Rwanda banned such imports in 2018 and since then its own textile industry has seen an 83% increase in the value of exports in the first two years.
In France, the government has announced a scheme to persuade consumers to repair their clothes and shoes rather than throw them away, offering grants of between £5 and £21 available to sewing workshops and shoemakers to subsidise the cost of repairs. Meanwhile, clothing manufacturers are now required to list for every garment how much water is used, detail the use of chemicals, the risk of microplastic emissions and whether the garment has used any recycled textiles.
Gill hopes small changes made locally will snowball into something more lasting. She’s determined that Tailoresque will become a by-word for sustainability in Dorset. So, as well as showcasing reworked wedding and mother-of-the-bride dresses at local wedding fairs, she is promoting remodelled prom dresses and buying quality men’s shirts to rework into gender-neutral garments.
‘Clothes are meant to be worn,’ she says, ‘and they are meant to be worn out – in every sense. With a little care and attention, clothes should last us for years. The most sustainable garment you can wear is the one that’s already in your wardrobe.’
Find more at Facebook.com/thehouseofmarais
