"Made in London" is madness

There’s a certain madness to making menswear in London—a city where logic would tell you to leave. But logic isn’t the point.

We craft every piece of our collection within the city’s limits. Our suppliers are so local, we walk between them: fabric merchants, button makers, pattern cutters. It’s an unhurried pilgrimage, a process as unruly and fragmented as the streets we trace.

It would be easier to go elsewhere—Italy and Portugal, with their storied craftsmanship, offer an alluring alternative. London’s prohibitive costs and the inefficiency of British manufacturing can make the entire endeavor seem like a form of madness. But that’s precisely the point. To stay is to embrace the difficulty, to believe that the challenge itself is part of the appeal.

Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura—the ineffable presence of an artwork tied to its original context—feels almost anachronistic today. He wrote, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

It’s not just fast fashion that’s the issue—though its rapid pace and disposability contribute to the problem. The more profound loss comes from dispersed, transnational production. When fashion is produced in fragmented, distant locations, untethered from the place of design, it loses its connection to both people and place, leaving behind objects stripped of their origin.

When we choose to produce down the street, to keep the process tied to the city itself, it’s not about nostalgia—at least, not entirely—nor is it an attempt to romanticize craft for the sake of a story. It’s about preserving something that would otherwise be lost: the relationship between the place, the people, and the clothes that emerge from that connection. In other words, aura.

Benjamin’s notion of aura speaks to a deeper human impulse—the need to be anchored to something authentic, something entwined with the particularities of time and place. This is why a leather-bound journal bought in Florence feels intimate, purposeful, while the same journal stamped “Made in China” feels hollow. It’s why a block-printed shirt from Jaipur carries its history in every thread, while a renowned Italian brand outsourcing its craftsmanship abroad feels curiously adrift.

Heron's Ghyll isn’t just about the clothes. It’s about carrying a piece of London with you—our London. Not the London of Savile Row, with its entrenched privilege and patriarchy, but something quieter, more reflective. North London. A place of émigrés and forgotten bookshops, where histories intertwine and endure, persisting quietly against the relentless tide of mechanical reproduction.

 

"Made in London" means something.

In a world oversaturated with "Made in Italy" labels, there’s a kind of romanticism in "London-made tailored suits"—an echo of a forgotten past, a quieter kind of prestige. The rarity of the phrase feels weightier than any promise of convenience.

Fragmentation encourages mastery.

Yes, it’s cumbersome, but in that division lies a kind of freedom. We choose who touches each garment—pattern makers, buttonholers, machinists—each of them specialists in a particular art, each contributing their expertise to something greater. There’s an elegance in this division, a meticulousness that forces you to slow down and consider every choice. It’s the kind of mastery you can’t rush.

A heritage woven into fabric.

The United Kingdom offers resources that are centuries in the making. Yorkshire’s textile mills still weave fabrics born of the Industrial Revolution, and Birmingham’s button makers still craft for the military. A buttonholer in Soho is the keeper of a family history stretching over 100 years, a ghost of the city’s sartorial past. This is what British made men's clothing really means—something richer than efficiency, something rooted in a place and time that feels distant and yet tangible.

In-person collaboration, an almost forgotten art.

Fashion isn’t something that translates over Zoom. The weight of fabric in your hands, the way it drapes, the way a seam tugs—it’s all too physical, too present to be anything but tactile. We meet with our makers face-to-face, not out of necessity, but because the craft demands it. There's an intimacy to these relationships, built over time, that comes from long hours spent in conversation and creation.

Artisanal, by choice.

We could produce more, faster. But we don’t. We choose the small scale, the limited runs, the made to order. There’s a value in creating something few will ever own.

Perhaps effort is the point.

It would be simpler to send our production overseas—or, for that matter, to Leicestershire... and we do entertain the thought on occasion. But there’s something in the grind, in the dragging of fabric across cobbled streets and negotiating with century-old manufacturers...

Maybe it’s the Puritan work ethic instilled deep within us, telling us that difficulty breeds distinction, that the struggle itself is the point. Or maybe we just can’t bear to give up the romance of it all—the illusion that we’re creating something rare in a world drowning in the commonplace. For reasons perhaps known only to us, we have chosen to stay. And in this decision, the aura of our work is preserved.