How Sunspel pays tribute to its Nottingham origins

In the year 2013, Sunspel (http://www.sunspel.com) heritage clothing remains a prominent fixture of the world’s finest stores and boutiques. It continues to expand its product offering, too, having introduced a womenswear range, collaborated with talented young designers on new launches and opened new stores of its own. But it’s easy to forget that the modern company would never have come to be without a little bit of Nottinghamshire inspiration and perspiration.

After all, it was Nottingham where the company that would become known as Sunspel was founded in 1860, by Thomas A Hill. The man who would begin an entire Hill dynasty had already accumulated significant expertise in British clothing as the chief Nottingham partner in I&R Morley, the then British market leader in quality knitwear, hosiery and underwear. With his passion for textile innovation, Thomas was already an active member of National Association for the Promotion of Technical and Commercial Education, and had been a major figure behind the decision of I&R Morley to pledge an annual subscription to fund a local technical school.

With Nottingham in the mid-19^th century heaving with industrial activity, it made sense for Hill to base his new company there, and he soon opened a factory in Newdigate. There, he had a 500-strong team working wonders with the premium Lisle cotton in the creation of the smooth, strong and high quality clothing that would earn the firm its reputation. As the decades passed, items including singlets, undershirts and tunics would be increasingly exported across the world. By the early 20^th century, the factory had been relocated to Long Eaton elsewhere in Nottingham, where it remains today, also serving as Sunspel’s head office.

There, as was the case back then, Sunspel continues to make and design new designer menswear and womenswear, making the most of long-standing and hard-won design and fabric engineering expertise. It was on the traditional lace making machines of Long Eaton, after all, that the company’s Quality 14 unique Cellular Fabric was developed in the 1930s. Local lace industry expertise also informed the development of the Quality 75 warp knit cotton fabric that was invented by Peter Hill, the grandson of the founder who wanted a lighter replacement for the relatively heavy weight pique cottons popular in 1950s ‘sports’ polo shirts. This was the fabric used in the Riviera polo shirts worn by Daniel Craig in several recent James Bond films.

Nottingham has long been at the centre of innovations like these, and the city’s instrumental role in the history of Sunspel (http://www.sunspel.com) has been referenced in some of its latest quality mens clothing. Crew neck T-shirts in the Spring Summer ’13 collection, for example, include printed graphics such as a hand-drawn reinterpretation of a 1960s letterhead used by a travel agent right here in Long Eaton, as well as a dog head in tribute to Bill, a much-loved canine resident of the factory in the 1930s – all showing that Sunspel could hardly forget its Nottingham past or present.

Editor’s Note: Sunspel (http://www.sunspel.com) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.