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If I was to summarise what Sunspel is all about as a brand, it's about quality. This is the signature Sunspel T-shirt in black. We made some of the earliest T-shirts ever, going back into the 1800s. The fabric itself is very special. Long staple Pima cotton from California, that then is spun in India twofold, where it's gassed, before being brought back to the UK. Roxanne is now going to cut the fabric.
It's one of the more mechanised activities that we carry out here in the factory, although we still do cut by hand. If she was cutting by hand, the maximum number of T-shirts she could cut at one time would be three. Here she's cutting 12, and we might go up to 24. First operation is twin needling the arms to the bodies. And the machines remove any surplus material to ensure that you get a completely smooth internal surface.
After the twin needling of the arms, the T-shirt is moved to overlocking, where the body is sewn together. It is not a simple or unskilled process at all, because our fabric moves a great deal. In fact, Val, who's doing this operation, has been with us for 48 and a half years. So a very, very long time. And a lot of people in this factory have turned this very much into an art form.
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We're creating that neckline on a binding machine. This is a particular technique that comes from our underwear heritage, where you had a bound neck. The binding that we're using here is from the original fabric batch. And we do that to ensure that there are no differences in shade. This is the neck binding stage of the process, when the strips are bound to the neck of the T-shirt. The important thing about this is that the tension is maintained at a consistent level so that the neckline itself remains symmetrical.
Back to Val now, who's really completing the final piece of the jigsaw, which is overlocking the T-shirt sides and creating the final shape. The labelling is very important, because each label says Made in England. That means a great deal to people internationally and to customers here in the UK, because it is a mark of quality still. Maintaining a British manufacturing base here is fundamental to the brand. It reflects our quality. It is a continuation of our history.
When we do outsource, we apply the understanding that we have here as a British manufacturer to the partners that we work with overseas. The principles that have built the business and built the brand, if you can maintain those principles from your heritage and apply them to today's environment, then you're creating something that's not only special because of its past, because of what it is today, but is also building strong foundations for the future.
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