Hiut Denim is making jeans in Cardigan, a small Welsh town with a long manufacturing history. After production moved overseas early in the century, many local workers lost jobs connected with what had been Britain’s largest jeans factory.
David and Clare Hieatt founded the company in 2011 to revive those skills and train another generation. Experienced makers, known within the business as grand masters, connect the new enterprise with techniques developed over years of factory work.
The Guardian’s feature follows how a smaller premium brand can preserve specialist knowledge in the place where it originated. The story is about rebuilding a particular local craft, not restoring the entire former industry at its original scale, and highlights the importance of passing practical skills between workers.
