22/11/2025
A little story about shoes, cars and my love for British craftsmanship. So, how do you go from designing shoes, to designing seats? Well, some years ago (OK, many years ago...) as a wide-eyed young whipper-snapper, I packed up my worldly posessions and went off to London to study Product Design with a specialism in footwear. There I learned about pattern making, about leather, about ancient hand-crafting techniques as well as modern manufacturing methods.
When I started my career as a designer a lot of manufacturing was still being done in Europe, and I worked in many factories in the UK, Portugal, Italy and Spain. Working with the old masters, I learned more about the commercial side of design and manufacturing.
As my career progressed, a lot of the factories I had worked with in the UK and Europe closed, and I found myself working more and more in China as production shifted east. The old master pattern-cutter in Portugal who had taught me his methods, the Italian designers I'd shadowed, the British lastmakers... all gone - retired, or at least working within a much smaller industry.
In China things were different - there were certainly very skilled and experienced people there, but everything was hyper-industrialised. The love, the passion, the craftsmanship... all seemingly lost in a roaring cacophony of machinery and conveyor belts.
I had started to miss the craft. To miss the detail. To miss the artesans and the exquisite materials made on machinery generations old, and I was sad that Britain was losing those skilled craftspeople and the factories which housed them.
As my disatisfaction with factories churning out thousands of shoes for a few dollars grew, an idea started to form and after a while I took the leap, resigned from my design my job and started Trimworks, so that I could carry on using those leatherworking skills I'd spent years learning, and build something here in the UK to continue the tradition of craftsmanship.
I found that those skills I'd learned as a footwear designer and maker - the precision cut of an Oxford brogue toecap, the millimeter-accurate placement of a seam, the Goodyear-welted leather sole, came in very useful when turning my attention to retrimming a classic Jaguar or Lotus as many techniques are similar.
And so, here we are today at the start of a new chapter in the Trimworks story, one which aims to nurture British craftsmanship, to use UK-made materials, to build something here in Britain for those of us who adore craftsmanship, value quality and honour the skills it takes to make something special.
Follow along as the first seat samples take shape!
