Sunday 6 February 2011

Brilliant blokes who know their threads

I had the most excellent good fortune to meet Philip from Crescent Trading one lunchtime last week. I cycled down Great Eastern Street, went round the back bit where all the warehouse places are and found him. I found him and all his lovely cut price, end of run fabrics in 2,000 square foot of freezing cold warehouse. Such a jolly, helpful interesting fella; he was either running outside to tell the local builders to "eff off and move their bleedin' vans" or dancing smoothly through the rolls and rolls of fabric, schmoozing all his customers, being witty, clever and helpful. He talked me through the rules, "Well then darlin', you can have a minimum of 1 metre of the suitings, but most of the other stuff you need to buy by the roll."

Boy, did I dig the suitings. Got a 50% silk 50% cashmere in wine red ("It's a steal, 30 quid, proper bargain - was 130 a metre, and did you know cashmere is going up in price and getting very difficult to get hold of now as them that make it ended up eating most of their stock this winter..."). Also got some beaut green wool stamped Ministry of Interiors, Kuwait ("Well you see they don't make their uniforms with any old rubbish, so they get the cloth woven and if it's ever so slightly off colour then they don't use it. And some of it ends up here.")

Of course, it turns out he supplies some of my fave fabric shops (The Cloth House and others on Berwick Street) and they put their whack on the price (as you would), so from now on, Crescent Trading will my first port of call for all fabric musings.

And the only reason why I found the most excellent Philip and his reasonably priced and delicious fabrics was because of Spitalfields Life - a most brilliant blog that has turned my head and has made me explore all sorts of wonderful places. B-rilliant.

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