Meet the Peterlee designer behind the Northeast brand Hawkwood Mercantile
Richard Illington grew up in Peterlee in County Durham in the 70s & 80s. Like many people his age he was into clothes, especially anything military but focused upon the aesthetics of it. Originally, Richard’s career plan was wanting to join the armed forces but he ended up going to art school instead & decided on a degree in textile design. For the next 15 years Richard tried a number of pursuits, gaining experience in various industries before starting fashion brand Hawkwood Mercantile. This is where his true passion is.
Richard said: “Fashion is one of the most polluting industries & it’s partly driven by cheap, disposable clothes. Our stuff’s made to last & we don’t try to follow fashion, so it’s not as throw away either. Because everything’s made to order one at a time, there’s much less wastage.”
Richard designs all of the clothing at Hawkwood Mercantile, is active in all sales, sourcing products and even the packaging and posting of his collection. With some pieces such as the Canoeist (a smock in cotton ripstop material, available in a range of colours) were taken directly from vintage military pieces and Richards unique interpretation of an existing iconic design. Hawkwood’s pieces evolve over time in design, until eventually you would not recognise where the original inspiration came from.
“The only thing I do not do is sewing & pattern cutting, I leave that to the professionals.”
Richard employs 15 plus people, (which includes about a dozen tailors). When he began almost ten years ago, he only had one tailor, now he is Richard’s master tailor & he recruits the new tailors that the company use. The way Hawkwood work is quite unique, using old fashioned methods, and traditional techniques, but produce very technical garments. Each piece is made by one tailor from beginning to end, not on a production line and a jacket can take 3 days to design, make and get ready for transit to the client.
“Tailors come in for a trial day. We have had a few individuals who just walked away because they found it to challenging, but if they pass the audition, they stay for a long term, and we are happy to say that we have an extremely low turnover of staff.”
Meet the man behind the label Richard Illington
The cottons that Hawkwood Mercantile use are sourced from India (other than the Ventile waterproof cotton, which use specialist technologies and is amongst the most hard wearing which is only made in Switzerland now). The company also source technical fabrics from the United Kingdom, as well as China, Korea & Japan. Richard looks for the best fabric for the function of the garment, whether that’s its waterproof qualities, weight, how easy it is to pack etc.
“Some fabrics I just really love, like the 60/40 we’ve just sourced from Japan. It’s really how it looks & feels & it took me years to find a supplier. It was the big outdoor fabric prior to Gore Tex.”
Hawkwood Mercantile make everything in-house and have not outsourced. They visited a number of manufacturers when they were starting out, but they did not feel any of them were quite right.
The clients that Hawkwood Mercantile make garments for are equally important, and with an impressively growing list of stars including Oasis,( Liam Gallagher and son Gene has contacted Hawkwood on a number of occasions). Stone Roses (Including the late great Mani), Portishead, Blur, Gorillaz, Billie Eilish, Paul Heaton, Sleaford Mods, Kneecap, Beta Band, Blossoms, Shed Seven, Lil’ Yachty, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, Souls of Mischief and Bonehead to name but a few, Richard makes it a priority to speak with everyone one to one, so he can get to know people & hear feedback, which is invaluable.
Richard is not shy when composing a masterpiece
Richard is quite a simple person, he is not hugely materialistic, he is not into flash cars or anything like that, he just wants to be happy really, spend as much time with his family as possible & finally get to read the books & listen to all the records that he keeps buying. Also, a priority is getting back up north more & maybe even a season ticket at Sunderland would be nice too. Richard has a few best mates and he hopes primarily they would all say that he was loyal. If Richard could be anything else other than a designer and businessman, he would be a musician.
“I think we just go into it wanting to make cool stuff, rather than wanting to sell loads. We can just make one piece, which means we can take risks & not have to make it super commercial. Because it’s made to order, in limited numbers we don’t generate much waste.”
