Buy European

Last week I posted here about verifying where 600+ "European" brands are actually made. Three of you corrected me: the SIGG line, the Salomon scope and the tracking claim. All three are fixed in that post and in the directory.

Since then I worked through British heritage names. The pattern is sharper than anything I found on the continent. These brands do manufacture in Britain, and the phrase still tells you almost nothing.

Burberry. The Heritage Trench and Car Coats have been made at the Castleford site in Yorkshire for over 50 years, from gabardine woven at Burberry's own mill in Keighley. That is the British part. The rest of the range is made elsewhere.

Barbour. The Bedale and Beaufort wax jackets are still made by hand in Simonside, South Shields. That is two jackets. The same building re-waxes and repairs the ones customers send back, which I would argue counts for more than most heritage marketing.

Mulberry. The company says it makes "around 50% of our Icons" at its two Somerset factories, which makes it the largest luxury leather manufacturer in the UK. Half, of the icon range.

Drake's. Every tie is handmade in their own east London workshop. Shirts and knitwear come from other makers.

Turnbull & Asser. Shirts, ready to wear and bespoke, from their own factory on the edge of Gloucestershire. One line from the factory stuck with me: they have machinists, not machine operatives, and each one can make a whole shirt.

Five famous British names, and in every case the honest answer is a product line, not a brand. The label on the individual piece is the only thing that actually tells you.

One that did not make it: Whitehouse Cox, the Walsall leather workshop. I went to verify them and the domain no longer resolves. Founded 1875, gone at some point recently, and I cannot even find an announcement.

Same project as last time. The five above are in the directory with the scope written on each entry and the source linked. Corrections welcome, the last three came from this thread.

Disclaimer: browle.com is mine. None of the five brands above is monetised, though 7 of the 671 entries do carry an affiliate link, so it is a project that can earn money rather than a pure hobby. No ads and no third party code on a normal page view, as discussed in the last thread.