In My View by Eric Musgrave: Fashion on the small screen

Why aren’t there more good television programmes about fashion?

I recently made a request on social media for suggestions of relevant things to watch. I received only one reply from someone who pointed me in the direction of a 2010 documentary called Bill Cunningham New York about a celebrated photographer and chronicler of street style in NYC. Born in 1929, the eccentric Cunningham worked for the New York Times for decades. He died in 2016.

It looks quite good and will cost me only £3.49 to watch on Prime Video, so I’ll give it a go.

My wish, however, was to find something about the British (and/or Irish) scene and ideally not just about high fashion, luxury or designer wear (or whatever the preferred current phrase is).

I am aware the days of having just four UK channels to be viewed through a telly in a living room are long gone, never to return, but I am certain the quantity of online options these days has not been matched by an increase in quality.

Given the vast complexity of the fashion sector and the fact that so much of the creative and production processes are a mystery to the millions who do not work within it, surely there is huge scope for interesting, informative, intelligent, stimulating and engrossing programmes to be presented.

Maybe they are out there already and I have not found them among the hundreds of options I have at the business end of my remote control. Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

Revealing to the public just what goes into getting garments, footwear or accessories sitting on a shelf or hanging on a rail could give the industry a significant boost and offer a different message to the oft-repeated one that all the fashion industry does is help kill the planet.

To stimulate some discussion, here are a few programmes I’ve enjoyed in recent months.

In May 2023 Patrick Grant was the ideal front man for BBC2’s Coronation Tailors: Fit For A King, an hour-long documentary that looked at the work being done by the family firm of Kashket and Partners, which specialises in ceremonial and military uniforms.

Amazingly, the 170 employees at its factory in Tottenham, north London had 6,000 uniforms to make or amend for King Charles’ coronation. Grant was as intrigued as I was by the topic. “That whole world of military tailoring is absolutely fascinating,” he stated.

I’d like to think even non-royalists would find this feature of interest – it was in-depth, well-paced and intelligently presented, as you’d expect from Grant, who bought the Savile Row firm of Norton & Sons in December 2005.

He subsequently started the E Tautz luxury menswear label, put together a diffusion tailoring range for Debenhams and also formed Community Clothing, the company that keeps some UK factories working by producing excellent basics. He knows what he’s talking about and asks sensible questions when he doesn’t know something.

Patrick Grant's Coronation Tailors: Fit for a King: "in-depth, well-paced and intelligently presented"

You can see the coronation programme on iPlayer here.

The articulate and dapper Grant is better-known as one of the hosts of BBC1’s The Great British Sewing Bee, which has been on our screens, I was surprised to learn, for nine series since 2013. Today, like its production stablemate, The Great British Bake Off, for me it spends too much time having silly interludes and “wacky” co-presenters.

As with most TV programmes today, the efforts made to ensure the contestants are appropriately “diverse” is slightly wearisome, but it’s not entirely the programme makers’ fault.

Why can’t the subject of sewing, handwork, pattern cutting, creativity with fabric and so on be treated with respect? It deserves it. I would like to see the attitude on Sewing Bee more like that found on Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky Arts, where the skill of the contestant is pretty much left to speak for itself, with only pertinent interjections from the expert judges.

I’d love to see Grant’s expert co-presenter, the formidable Esme Young, a lecturer at Central Saint Martins and a co-founder of the legendary Swanky Modes womenswear label in the 1970s, really tell the hopefuls what she thought of their work, especially the often dodgy aesthetics offered in colour, pattern and shape.

The Great British Sewing Bee: relies too much on "wacky" co-presenters

Still, we mustn’t be too elitist these days, must we?

All nine series of Sewing Bee appear to be on the iPlayer.

It was more “serious” and less “entertainment” in its early days. I preferred it that way.

Given their knowledge of their territory and their sensible demeanours, I’d happily watch any fashion-related programme fronted by Grant or Young. I cannot say the same about anything involving Gregg Wallace, the diamond geezer who obviously has a cracking agent, given by how often he appears on the small screen.

Wallace, appropriately enough for a cookery programme regular, is a Marmite presenter you either love, or don’t. I am securely in the second camp and it was only in the cause of research for this column that I forced myself to watch the BBC2 offering Inside The Factory: Jeans, that was broadcast at the end of January.

Eric, don’t judge a book by its cover or a programme by its front man. What a brilliant production this is. Ostensibly about the Hiut jeans factory in Wales, a large part of the programme engagingly and perfectly explains how cotton yarn is spun and how denim fabric is produced, thanks to a visit to the Candiani mill in Milan, Italy, where owner Alberto Candiani proved to be as articulate as Wallace is annoyingly hopeless.

“Mate, there is so much going on! Where do you start?” is a typical exclamation from the presenter, whose principal vocabulary comprises “Crikey!”, “Wow!” and “Amazing!” David Attenborough he isn’t.

That aside, I can’t recall seeing a better documentary about the creation of yarn and fabric. The sections on jean making and zip production are well done too, with Wallace’s younger female sidekick Cherry Healey providing more balanced and informative commentary.

You can watch it here.

Sadly, the best programme on fashion I have watched lately was made in 1987. On YouTube I found a recording of The Clothes Show broadcast on 24 November that year, fronted by Jeff Banks and Selina Scott, assisted by Caryn Franklyn, who eventually replaced Scott as the main female presenter.

I had forgotten this BBC production ran for a long spell - from 1986 to 2000. (I must admit I missed its revival in 2006-2009 on some channels called UKTV Style and Really). Incredibly enough, the Beeb’s Sunday evening show attracted around 9 million viewers at its height.

The episode I watched can be viewed below.

The Clothes Show worked so well because it was inclusive, covering everything from designer fashion through brands to high street styles, all without any segregation or order of importance. It was bright, informative and fun, giving a relaxed but expert insight into different aspects of the fashion biz.

It also got out of London regularly and “took it to the people”. In the episode I watched, Banks and Scott travelled to Stirling in central Scotland with lots of rails of clothes to show to local lads (and a few lasses) the latest styles from now-long-forgotten names like Wrygges, Radius, Concept Man (aka Chelsea Girl for men), Principles and “a Swedish company called Hennes”. I wonder what happened the that last one…

In contrast to this end of the market, the episode also featured an interview with Mary Quant (then 57 years old) in her new accessories shop in Carnaby Street and another with a 44-year-old Yohji Yamamoto at the opening of his second London boutique, where he agrees his clothes are very expensive and reveals he never wears his own designs, preferring second-hand clothes.

Great stuff.

During his very long career in the industry Banks might not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but he knows his stuff and he had an easy-going charm that worked well with both sexes.

Scott was a good solid journalist and was easy on the eye but I was never convinced by her fashion credentials. Franklyn, however, was fashion through and through, an ex-fashion editor of style mag i-D, who brought an engaging and intelligent “street” element to proceedings.

The programme benefited from people who knew the topic, not someone who’d been on a cookery programme or a gardening makeover the week before.

Of course, almost 50 years on the media landscape is unrecognisable from that of 1987. The armies of young people (and probably the older folk) who watched The Clothes Show on a television at home don’t exist anymore. They are streaming dozens of channels plus thousands of social media feeds on their phones wherever they are. But I can’t help feeling they would enjoy better programmes about fashion than most of what’s around today.

Do you agree?