Your Role
Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Ian Mankin
I have been running the Ian Mankin business since Ian retired 5 years ago. My family have been weaving cotton fabrics in Burnley for over 150 years and I am now the sixth generation of the family in the trade. When I started in the family business Ian was my first customer. Our working relationship grew over a 25 year period and it was a natural transition for me to take over the running of the brand when he retired.
Timeless
What makes Ian Mankin different from other brands?
Unlike most other brands Ian Mankin designs and weaves its own fabrics in its own weaving mill in Lancashire. The brand has a very simple, timeless and classical look and uses a small and traditional colour palette throughout the range. This means that fabrics from all the collections work well with each other and do not date. We are accredited by the Soil Association to produce organic fabrics and have a strong environmental ethos, using only natural fibres across the range.
Popularity
Which of your products and designs are the most popular?
Our most popular designs are simple ticking stripes. They have an elegant simplicity that works in all sorts of rooms from Georgian townhouses to coastal cottages.
Supporting British Manufacturing
You manufacture all your products in the UK. Tell us a bit about your mill?
Our mill is in Burnley, Lancashire; once the world centre for cotton weaving. In the late 1920s there were 100,000 looms working in Burnley - now there are just 30 and all of these are in the Ian Mankin mill. We are proud to be keeping many generations of skills alive and kicking!
Organic
Your fabrics are made from natural fibres, do you think this is important in fabric manufacture today?
Natural fibres offer a unique handle and a connection back to the earth. Our organic cotton is grown without the need for pesticides and all the dyes we use have been carefully selected to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Our fabrics are washed in pure Pennine water leaving a cloth that is just as nature intended! The fabrics are all recyclable at the end of their life.
Personal Favourite
What is your personal favourite fabric or item that you produce?
What a hard question to answer. It is like having to choose a favourite child in your family! One of my favourites at the moment is our Plantation Herringbone. It is a very simple natural cotton undyed fabric that looks absolutely fabulous as large curtains.
Trends
Are there any key design trends that you predict will be big in 2015?
At Ian Mankin we take very little notice of trends! We pride ourselves on producing fabrics in colours that will stand the test of time. The last thing we would want is someone to invest in new curtains that became unfashionable again in a few years. You only have to look back at old family photo albums and you wonder what on earth you were doing wearing that jumper!
Looking to the future
What new ranges can we look forward to from Ian Mankin?
We have been working on a new collection of wallcoverings. The collection will be called Imperial (named after one of the original family cotton mills in Burnley). The new wallcoverings take some of the designs from our recent MONO print collection and also introduce some new stripes as well. The launch for this will be at Decorex in September.
Both of the Just Fabrics showrooms hold all of the Ian Mankin pattern books or alternatively browse the new range of Ian Mankin deckchair fabrics.
