‘In my teenage years, I enjoyed making my own clothes from paper patterns, but the one thing that was a real challenge was to make a shirt,’ the British designer Margaret Howell said in the 2021 Richardson-directed short, The Making of a Shirt. ‘A shirt has so many strong pieces. You have to halve and quarter to get it to set correctly, and then all these little details – at least two dozen pieces of pattern that go into making the shirt.’
It was in the early 1970s that Howell, then a young Fine Art graduate of Goldsmiths University, discovered, by chance, a men’s pinstripe shirt in a jumble sale; in the months that followed, she set about making her own, sourcing the perfect cotton from David & John Anderson, a traditional Scottish supplier of men’s dress shirt fabrics (materials remain central to Margaret Howell, which now spans a comprehensive men’s and women’s wardrobe). Later, in 2000, she established a workroom in Edmonton, north London, ‘Unit 7’, to create the perfect shirt – each hand-stitched by a single machinist and comprising up to 25 individual components.
Inside Margaret Howell’s new London workroom
In summer 2026, though, Howell established a new home for her superlative shirtmaking: Florentia Village in north London’s Harringay, a former textile manufacturing hub that has been recently renovated into an ‘industrial campus’ and co-working space by architecture firm Turner.Works. The new space marks what Howell calls a ‘commitment to British shirtmaking’, the spoils of which will be marked by a special swing tag and label marked ‘London Workroom’.
Embracing several light-filled rooms on the upper floor of Florentia Village, the move, says Howell, was to create a ‘more efficient, contemporary working environment’ that combines the traditional working methods established at Unit 7 (pattern pieces remain cut by hand; specialised machinists work on the components of shirts individually) with an increased capacity for production, meaning that a larger percentage of Margaret Howell’s shirts can be made in London (other shirts are made in factories in and around Florence, Italy, as well as other British factories). The 17 people currently employed at the workshop have more than 175 years’ combined experience in shirtmaking.
What is most unique about the facility, though, is the way that it sees through the entire life cycle of the shirt. All patterns are created in-house, going through rigorous prototyping across the various steps; as such, when it comes to producing the final shirts, the team is already familiar with the intricacies of the pattern. Visiting the factory gives further insight into this process, which, despite the relative simplicity of Howell’s designs – she is known for a sense of quiet restraint that means garments are rarely embellished or outwardly complicated – requires particular attention to its subtle details, like the lining up of checks and pinstripes on pockets, cuffs and collars so that they perfectly join and match (other processes include the pre-pressing of gauntlets and plackets, which allows machinists to get the shirts perfectly flat).
After the roughly 12,000 perfect stitches it takes to craft a single shirt, the pieces are completed with a final subtle flourish: a set of horn or mother-of-pearl buttons, before each shirt is pressed again and packaged for delivery.
The initial spoils of the new Florentia Village London Workroom are arriving in stores currently as part of the A/W 2026 season. This will include 12 designs in total, spanning both perennial Margaret Howell signatures – the ‘Basic’ and ‘Simple’ shirts are both currently being produced in the facility, alongside what the brand calls more ‘directional’ pieces, including the new ‘Stepped Hem’ and ‘Pin Tuck’ shirts. Rounding out the line-up will be two shirts crafted from leftover shirting cotton, ‘underpinning the brand’s continued commitment to responsible manufacturing’, says Howell.
