After a career in fashion working for the likes of Nicole Farhi and Vivienne Westwood, Laura Jones is making her own clothes and selling them, along with items by like-minded sustainable designers, from her shop and workshop in the heart of Crediton
Where in Devon would you expect to find a fashion designer and maker who’s worked for the likes of Vivian Westwood, Nicole Farhi and Batman? Probably not in a quiet side street in the Mid Devon market town of Crediton. So, it was a lovely surprise when I happened across The Makers Boutique and Workshops on North Street, just off the town’s main square.
The rails of stylish, ethically made clothes, designed and crafted on the premises by former Plymouth College of Art fashion lecturer Laura Jones, are the perfect excuse to Shop Local. What makes this boutique stand out from many other small independents across Devon is that every item showcases local design and makers; Laura’s creations are complemented by a select range of jewellery and accessories made by South West designers who share her values.
Laura’s sustainability ethos is straightforward, witty, and utterly believable, unlike the mission statements of many a High Street fashion brand. It’s printed on the brown cardboard care labels on her garments and reads: “Care: Love, Preserve, Repair, Regenerate, Create, Breathe deeply, Get off your phone, Dance often”.
It’s enough to make you do a little dance in excitement at the bravery of an entrepreneur who’s genuinely offering something different, although it’s a challenge to get off your phone as both the shop, its contents and its owner are so ‘Instagrammable’.
During opening hours, Laura is usually found behind the counter with needle and thread doing small finishing jobs or upstairs at the sewing machine in her studio that overlooks the shop floor. Outside retail hours, she periodically runs creative workshops and craft activities to teach people how to create one-off garments or accessories.
‘It’s been my lifelong dream to have a shop,’ Laura confides. ‘I wasn’t planning on setting up my business before my daughter started school, but this building is perfect for me. When it came up in 2021, I snapped it up and opened the shop in November of that year.
‘I’d wanted to have my own shop since I started working in fashion and I’d done almost everything but that - from styling and costume design to working in wholesale and for other designers.’
The Makers Boutique and Workshops combine Laura’s passion for teaching and producing beautiful products. The shop’s open-plan design lends itself to both; Laura’s cutting tables and sewing machines are visible on the upper floor, allowing her customers to see how things are made and, hopefully, inspiring them to get involved.
She says: ‘I had this vision of an interactive place where there’s a connection between the maker and the customer. It’s ready-to-wear with a difference because I’m here making on-site and having conversations with my customers that influence my collections. The workshops help people understand the skills needed to make clothing and how to be more eco-conscious in their fashion choices.
‘I particularly enjoy folding fabric, origami-style. Clothes mass-produced for the High Street haven’t had the same amount of time and love invested in the design process.’
Laura has spent her career exploring the intersections between art, science and commerce. Her master’s degree focused on 19th century Jewish tailoring and the period when fashion was starting to be produced en masse. She’s worked as a costume maker and stylist on films like Batman Begins and Tomb Raider 2. She honed her skills as a designer and maker working in menswear as a pattern cutter, garment technologist and consultant for high-end labels such as Nicole Farhi and Vivienne Westwood.
She hopes her unique concept fashion store will encourage people to question the ethics of fast fashion, globalisation and China’s current domination of the garment industry.
‘I’d love to think that people’s ethical concerns will change their attitude to fast fashion and mass production, but I actually think we will eventually move more production back to Europe and the UK for political reasons. The shift to global production has been a disaster because designers are now so far removed from the people making their clothes. Everything is now done through email and digital means - subtleties get lost in translation.
‘I think production will come back to this country to some extent, but no one's training anybody in the technical skills they’ll need. We must keep those heritage skills alive because once they’re gone, they’re gone.’
themakersboutique.co.uk
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