Sartorial
FOX BROTHERS & CO Chris Sullivan meets Douglas Cordeaux, the doyen of ancient British clothiers Fox Brothers, who hauled the brand up by its bootstraps a decade ago www.foxflannel.com
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“Jeremy Hackett suggested I should go and take a look at Fox Bros in Wellington in Somerset. The last thing Jeremy said to me was: ‘Whatever you do, don’t buy the mill, as it’s a disaster.’ So I went out and bought the mill with my business partner because, as soon as I walked into the mill, I was enamoured”
ox Brothers and Company is a name that has echoed through the corridors of sartorial excellence for almost 250 years, but relatively recently the business has had a rather invigorating shot in the arm, when the company was bought in 2009 by style monger Douglas Cordeaux and his business partner Deborah Meaden, who have taken Fox Brothers back to its deserved pole position. The company began as an offshoot of the Were family clothier business (who began producing rather fine serge under Elizabeth I) when in 1768 Thomas Were’s 21-year-old grandson Thomas Fox (1747-1821) joined the company. Mr. Fox became sole proprietor in 1796, introducing the Fox cloth mark and changing the name of the company to Fox Brothers. By this time the company owned five mills and employed nearly 5,000 workers. During
WW1, the company earned a government contract to provide 852 miles of khaki coloured wool for
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