"The UK's premier platform for fashion fabrics, accessories, print studios and vintage garments."
TLTF attracts designers, buyers and product developers who come not only to maintain existing relationships but work also to source and develop new and exciting products. Being in London, not only is the fair extremely convenient for all our customers but it provides a fantastic opportunity to find inspirational, relevant and directional collections.
I’ve never visited a textile fair event before so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I arrived. When I first entered the hall there were clothing racks set up by two companies who were selling vintage garments including jackets, dresses, and tops. Once you walked up the steps into the open plan, the area was set up alphabetically under each companies name. Rather than being finished items of clothing, the fabrics were laid out as sample pieces. There were hundreds of stalls who were promoting their materials from all over the world, including turkey, Brazil, holland, and many more. I was drawn to colours and texture of the materials the most while wandering through the fair and couldn’t help myself from feeling the texture of most of them that stood out to me.
With my project focusing on sustainable fashion I was intrigued by the companies who pay close attention to sustainability, eco-friendly and organic materials. I particularly liked the fabrics from EcoSimple, whose sustainable fabrics are composed of threads made from recycled plastic bottles and from the waste of fabrics, supporting the circular economy and the responsible fashion. I went through the process of filling out a form to purchase five different types of materials. The pricing from EcoSimple wasn’t too expensive for each fabric, most of them were priced at £15 per meter. The only problem was that the minimum set amount you had to purchase was 25 meters. Many other companies had their minimum amount set at around 100m but a few even went up to a minimum of 1000-3000m. I realised that the Textile Fair is mainly suitable for well established companies who are sourcing materials to mass produce items that they intend on selling. For myself, I just need to source a minimum amount of materials that I can use for my projects at this point and therefore figured that acquiring fabrics this way was not suitable. Nevertheless, it was a resourceful visit and I learnt a lot through speaking to different people about how large amounts of materials are produced and sold.