Wayne Hemingway MBE BOB Interview
Wayne Hemingway MBE is a fashion designer and co-founder of HemingwayDesign - an award-winning creative design studio. Under HemingwayDesign’s sub-brand Vintage, came the Classic Car Boot Sale. Where over 100 vintage vehicles and traders are joined by thousands of shoppers, collectors and vinyl lovers for a family-friendly celebration of all things vintage, collectible and up cycled. On top of all of this he is also a non-executive Director of Best of Britannia.
How did you first get involved with Best of Britannia?
We share some of the same values in terms of design and I’m a big supporter. We do most of our manufacturing at HemingwayDesign in the UK – we’re synergists. We’ve also had them as guests at a few of our events, Classic Car Boot Sale and Urban Village Fete.
What’s important to you about buying British, British makers and Best of Britannia?
It’s important for many reasons in terms of sustainability. If things are made closer to home it’s an environmental and ethical choice. You know that the manufacturing of products, if it’s made closer to home, is going to have higher human standards in terms of how people are treated. It’s important that social sustainability of making closer to home helps people start jobs, have careers and start businesses. Then there’s the economic sustainability of creating employment.
How often do you personally buy British?
It’s not only whenever possible, it’s simple things like if we go into a supermarket we’ll look at where the fruit comes from. We’ve got a home in Australia and we know how well Australia are at doing that and we try and do it ourselves.
Nearly all the things we manufacture under the Hemingway name is made in the UK. It’s not about brand UK for me it’s about the ethical and the environmental choices behind doing it. I don’t have a problem buying from anywhere but I do know I’m much safer buying from the UK because I know what the control is there.
When I buy things I want to know the provenance of it. I don’t want to think about ‘oh that could have been made in a factory in Bangladesh, it might be unsafe for people if the roof collapsed’, like one did a few years ago and people died. We have standards of manufacturing in the UK which protects the workforce, we have minimum wages, we are a developed manufacturing country and if we can make things here then we’re looking after that.
Wayne Hemingway MBE is supporting Buy British Day.
http://houseofhemingway.co.uk/hemingway-design/
