I suspect I am in a minority among readers of this book in not knowing who Patrick Grant is in advance. He is the dapper judge from The Great British Sewing Bee, a Savile Row master tailor and founder of Community Clothing. I discovered all of this while reading the book, which I picked up for its title.
There have been a steady stream of books with titles like this one – Enough, Consumed, Possessed, and Stuffocation all come to mind as single-word titles on consumerism. Each of them updates the issue for those coming new to the topic, and reflects the particular interests of the author. In this case, it’s a focus on fashion, worthwhile work, and quality.
The book covers some historical ground, looking at the evolution of industrial production and how it became profit driven. For the best part of a thousand years, Grant suggests, makers were asking themselves ‘how can I make this better?’ Today that has been replaced with the question ‘how can I make this cheaper?’ In the transition, a rich legacy of learning on quality and durability has gone out the window. Shoppers are so used to shoddy goods that they don’t know what to look for, and with 100 billion garments made in 2023, it has become all too normal to consider things disposable. It is possible, the book argues quite convincingly, that “the things we make today are of lower quality than at any point in history.”
I don’t need to go over the environmental consequences of this again, or the way that labour is exploited along the supply chain. The book covers both of those topics, but it also describes how the end user is ripped off by tacky excess. We waste our money and we miss out on the joy of better and more meaningful things. “It stands to reason that the more things we have, the less meaning each one can have to us,” he points out.
While it covers some familiar ground, there are a couple of things I really liked about Less. One is that Grant picks up on interesting historical points that I hadn’t come across before. How demand for military uniform led to standard sizes and cheaper off-the-shelf clothing for everyone. How ‘little and often’ luxury goods like tea and sugar led to local shops, rather than occasional journeys to market towns. Or how online shopping was invented by Gateshead council in 1984, as a community initative to support elderly residents.
More uniquely, Grant brings his experience as a craftsman to his writing. He can explain exactly how things are made cheaper, where the compromises are, and what to look out for when buying quality. And he’s not just ranting from the sidelines here. His Community Clothing company is making quality clothing in Britain, creating employment in former mill towns, and demonstrating that there is a viable alternative to the global tide of tat.
I hope that at some point the run of books like this one will end, because they will no longer be necessary. For the time being, Less stands in the tradition started back in the fifties by the likes of JK Galbraith, EJ Mishan or Vance Packard. This is a worthy entry in that list, and you’ll get even more from it if you’re already familiar with Grant’s work. After all, “everyone can afford less. Everyone has room for less in their life.”
- Less is available from Earthbound Books
The Earthbound Report 
Many thanks for this, and I will certainly be using Community Clothing. I already only wear quality clothing from a UK based specialist retailer, so it is good to find a UK made only source. However it will be sometime before my current clothes wear out!
What is really marked about this is just how expensive quality clothing seems to be – approaching £100 for many items – because the cheap stuff is so bad of course.
What we have also lost is the ability to repair our own clothes – common when I was growing up 60 years ago and essential to be able to afford this sort of stuff by making it last as long as possible. Addressing the ‘Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness’ is very import here if everyone is going to be able to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
We also need access to repairing skills – repair cafes of course fill the gap to some extent these days – and also a robust second hand market. Elderly fingers and poor eyesight make sowing difficult for me these days, but I still repair my own shoes, which can make them last up to ten years – at around £200 for a pair of Loakes of Northampton that is very necessary.
This is definitely a case of ‘spend twice as much on half as much’ – but perhaps that should be three times as much on a third as much for clothing.
Yes, and Grant uses the boots theory in the book to explain why we need to reset our ideas of affordability. Community Clothing’s prices aren’t expensive in the bigger scheme of things, but quality always loses out when we forget to think that way.