Meet The Makers: The Sheffield womenswear designer with fashion in her blood from fashion film aashiyana song Watch Video

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✓ Published: 31-May-2024

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Our choice of clothes helps to define how we think of ourselves and how we think of others.<br/>An outfit can suggest social status, political beliefs, a certain taste in music and even our mood on any given day - there’s always story<br/>behind the clothes we wear.<br/>It’s one of the reasons Harriet Eccleston, whose clothing brand goes by the same name, felt compelled to continue in a family tradition of tailors, drapers and milliners stretching back generations.<br/>“It’s quite a personal thing,” she said. “The garments that you wear are one of the first things that people see about you and I guess (they) interpret your characteristics or your personality through your choice of clothing and that has always interested me - the emotion, the personality that clothes can bring out.”<br/>Working out of her one room workshop in the Albyn Works, a former<br/>factory building in Sheffield’s Kelham Island, Harriet creates<br/>womenswear with sustainability and heritage at its core.<br/>From ideation and fabric cutting all the way through to hand stitching buttons and packaging items, Harriet’s head, heart and hands are behind it all.<br/>The finest British cottons and wools are taken and combined with a soft colour palette to create elegant garments with a classic versatility.<br/>Yet the reason Harriet’s creations stand out is beyond their aesthetic.<br/>Examine them more closely and you find storytelling and tradition woven into every piece.<br/>The influence of Harriet’s ancestry is evident throughout her business.<br/>“Fashion is in my blood, their stories are in my heart,” reads her website.<br/>Scattered amid the fabric swatches and sketches on the work surfaces and pin boards of her workshop are black and white photos of a moustachioed man immaculately turned out regardless of the scene he appears in.<br/>The man’s name is E.D. Soulsby and he’s Harriet’s great great<br/>Grandfather. <br/>In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Soulsby, owned and ran a menswear shop in the industrial heartlands of Northumbria.<br/>“It was in the family for generations - everybody mucked in and was part of it.<br/>“My granny spent a lot of time there until she was married and she told me a lot of stories. <br/>“They specialised in quality menswear clothing and the idea was they were pieces that would last.”