The Importance
of Provenance
John Smedley continues to expand and innovate. Our latest collections are some of our best ever and we continue to break new ground. However, we only move forward by understanding and holding on to the importance of provenance. That applies to John Smedley as a company and the garments we create. It helps make us who we are and reminds us of our commitment to creating only the highest quality collections.
What provenance means to us
John Smedley today is based on 225 years' experience of knitting. We take our long-standing values and apply them to a contemporary fashion industry. We strive to make all our garments at our mill in Derbyshire, which keeps us true to our roots, but equally important, it means we manage our traceability. We're in control of what we create.
Left: The iconic bridge at our Lea Mills factory in Derbyshire.
Top: The water from underground springs that runs through Lea Mills provides the softness and purity we need to create luxury knitwear.
Bottom: The jay bird, John Smedley's mark of quality, is the largest natural disperser of acorns and can be found in the area around our Lea Mills factory.
Working in partnership
While manufacturing in England is important to us, so is the provenance of our high quality luxury fibres. We have excellent relationships with our wool growers because we work with them directly.
We can trace all our wool to the individual sheep stations in New Zealand. We work with local businesses and have partnerships with various other suppliers, including spinners and button suppliers.
Quality Control
All of this helps us to guarantee quality and apply our quality standards. There are no short cuts. No searching for lower priced alternatives which mean lower quality. We only buy the very best and we're in control of the production process from start to finish
Each John Smedley sweater takes around seven weeks to produce and consists of more than three miles of the finest yarn and around 1.2million stitches.
