REPORT
town of Luton (about 50 km north of London). He discovered that Luton manufacturers were desperate for better quality buckram and dissatisfied with the stiffening of the fabric – a result of the complete lack of communication between the finishers, who did the stiffening, and the milliners. David put his expertise to good use and established the connection between spinners, weavers, dyers and finishers on the one side, and millinery manufacturers on the other. This resulted in the production of better buckram to suit the millinery industry.
David
Developing and sourcing new materials
It thus became the speciality of the Parkin family to develop textiles tailored to the needs of their clients. Which, as Nick recalls, came in very handy during the recent pandemic. They could help out their local NHS (National Health Service) in only a couple of weeks by producing ISO-certified medical fabrics at a time when shipments were massively reduced and most mills were closed.
This expertise and experience was handed down in the family, now in its third generation, and led them to expand their activities in other directions. One day in the early 1990s, the late renowned London milliner Mitzi Lorenz gave David a piece of sinamay the size of a postage stamp and said: “David, you must source this, it’s going to be big.” The Parkins were puzzled as to what the textile was and sent it to the testing house in Manchester. It came back labelled as Musa textilis, or abaca (also known as Manila hemp), a fibre indigenous to the Philippines.
Having managed to secure a couple of thousand pounds from the Chamber of Commerce, David set up a trade mission to the Philippines and came back with a box full of sinamay samples. When
established the connection between spinners, weavers, dyers and finishers on the one side, and millinery manufacturers on the other
he first showed them to the Luton manufacturers their only comment was: “That’s awful, it will never catch on!” Little did they know. Parkin listened closely to what milliners required and dealt directly with the weavers in the Philippines, who had been handweaving abaca for five centuries, to understand how they were producing it and to advance their methods of production to mutual benefit. Easy to dye in an attractive range of colours, sinamay soon conquered the millinery world as a welcome replacement for disappearing types of straw. Next, they introduced sinamay with lurex, mesh (or windowpane) sinamay, and pinokpok. When handmade
couture millinery took off, more fancy designs were introduced.
Adapting to change
Back in the 1980s (“the decade of Diana, when hats were huge”), abaca was not available and buckram was widely used in the ready-to-wear millinery industry by means of hydraulic blocking. This original buckram was far too strong and stiff to hand block. In the next decade, the necessity to manufacture buckram dramatically reduced as millinery became less mass-produced and more of a cottage industry. Parkin altered the construction of its buckram to a more flexible version, suitable for hand blocking.
In order to survive in the volatile textile world, the company has had to adapt not
Buckram fitting model
Buckram hat covered with leather and fabric
Abaca plant fibres
only to changing fashions but also to changing circumstances. The price of raw cotton has been very unstable for the last ten to fifteen years due to currency instabilities, harvests being affected by climate change, and more recently shipping problems as a result of the pandemic.
Another problem is the contamination of raw cotton by other fibres of inferior quality. This may not matter for low quality fabrics – although it can affect the capacity for bleaching and dyeing – but it is a serious problem for high grade fabrics, such as those used for sheeting or the clothing industry. If you have to segregate those fibres first (for couture fabrics, for instance) the price of your product may increase to a point where you run the risk of pricing yourself out of the market. This is one of the reasons Nick decided to change the production process of buckram yet
Finished sinamay hat based on the buckram fitting model
Creating a buckram base
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