Patrick Grant: Less

Tickets £5-22

This is a live, in-person event.

Location: Morningside United Church, 15 Chamberlain Road, EH10 4DH

We're incredibly excited to welcome master tailor and judge on the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee, Patrick Grant, as he talks about his career in the fashion industry and his new book Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish. How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier.

About the book

We used to care a lot about our clothes. We didn’t have many but those we had were important to  us, we’d cherish them, repair them and pass them on. And making them provided fulfilling work  for millions of skilled people locally. Today the average person has nearly five times as many  clothes as they did just 50 years ago, last year 100 billion garments were produced worldwide, most  made from oil, 30% of which were not even sold, and the equivalent of one bin lorry full of  clothing is dumped in landfill or burned every single second. Our wardrobes are full to bursting  with clothes we never wear so why do we keep buying more?

In this passionate and revealing book about loving clothes but despairing of a broken global system  Patrick Grant considers the crisis of consumption and quality in fashion, and how we might make  ourselves happier by rediscovering the joy of living with fewer, better quality things. Weaving in his personal journey through fashion, clothing and the other everyday objects in his life this is a  book that celebrates craftsmanship, making things with care, buying things with thought and  valuing everything we own. It explains how rethinking our relationship with clothing could  kickstart a thriving new local economy bringing prosperity and hope back to places in our country  that have lost out to globalisation, offshore manufacturing and to the madness of price and  quantity being the only things that matter.

With a career in fashion spanning nearly two decades Patrick Grant has a lot to say about our clothing, who makes it and how it’s made. He is a  regular on television and radio as a commentator on the clothing and  textile industries and is best known as a judge on the BBC’s Great British  Sewing Bee. Patrick holds an honorary Doctorate from Heriot Watt  University, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is in the Business  of Fashion 500 index of the most influential people in global fashion. In  2016 he launched Community Clothing, a social enterprise which supports  thousands of UK jobs through making and selling affordable highquality clothing