Nigel Cabourn obit

Obituary: Nigel Cabourn, celebrated British fashion designer (1949-2026)

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Nigel Cabourn, one of the UK’s most respected and well-loved designers, has died of cancer, aged 77.

Like his contemporaries and friends, Sir Paul Smith and Margaret Howell, Cabourn was most revered in Japan, where his main brand and various sub-brands have enjoyed cult status since the early 1980s.

His reputation at home would be much better if he had not chosen to remain firmly based in Jesmond, a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, far from the London fashion scene. It was in 1969 when he started his first menswear brand – Cricket – while still a student at Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design (now Northumbria University).

Born on 7 October 1949 near Scunthorpe, Cabourn spent his teens in the new town of Peterlee, County Durham, where his father was the postmaster. Cabourn admitted he fancied doing fashion design at college when a friend told him it would be a good place to meet girls.

In almost 60 years as a designer, Cabourn enjoyed all the ups and downs the fashion industry can present. Cricket did very well until 1984, when cashflow issues ended its run even though Cabourn was backed by Manchester-based menswear company Impeccable.

After Cricket’s liquidation, Cabourn preferred to use his own name for his principal collections and he avoided overstretching himself financially. But like many passionate designers, he was never overly concerned with making money.

Producing garments - especially outerwear - based on old-school attention to detail, passionate pursuit of quality, and, in many instances, using UK-made fabrics, was more Cabourn’s style.

When I interviewed him last November, he told me he saw himself as a clothing designer, not a fashion designer: “I’m a very functional designer. I’ve been lucky to do what I wanted to do, what I believed in.”

In the immediate post-Cricket years Cabourn was obliged to follow a more commercial path, creating designs for Next for Men, French Connection and Philip Start’s London-based menswear mini-chain, Woodhouse. In 1985 Woman magazine named Cabourn Designer of the Year for his work with Woodhouse – the first time the accolade had gone to a menswear designer.

On the Cricket stand at the Paris menswear fair Sehm in 1979, Cabourn met Sam Sugure, a Japanese wholesaler who had taken Margaret Howell to Japan. After Sugure laid down a massive order worth £250,000, the pair became partners and Cabourn’s Japanese adventure began.

By 1986 a few Nigel Cabourn stores had been opened in Japan. Since January 2025 his Japanese licence has belonged to major trading house Marubeni. There are now 11 stores selling Japanese-made Main Line garments designed in Cabourn’s studio in Jesmond. Japanese customers are also offered Nigel Cabourn womenswear, Cabourn’s premium British-made Authentic line, his workwear brand, Lybro, and the retro sportswear-inspired Army Gym range.

Currently Marubeni handles all online sales from Japan. It remains to be seen if a UK-based ecommerce business will be revived. Globally, Nigel Cabourn has about 20 wholesale stockists for Authentic, typically premium independents such as The Bureau in Belfast and 14oz in Berlin. Global turnover for the Nigel Cabourn brand is about £10m.

The Jesmond studio is home to an amazing archive of 3,000 books and 4,000-plus vintage pieces, primarily military uniforms, workwear, practical outerwear and active sportswear. Cabourn was given his first military jacket in the late 1970s by Paul Smith, who at the time was selling some of Cabourn’s early tailored suits to wholesale customers.

Nearly six decades later, Nige, as he was known to his legions of pals and associates worldwide, was busy sharing stories about his visits to flea markets and vintage specialists to his 310,000 Instagram followers.

Since the millennium, Cabourn has been best known for the inspiration he took from Everest mountaineers George Mallory and Edmund Hillary, and Polar explorers like Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. His main collections – regarded as vintage pieces of the future – were not aimed at the mainstream. His classic Everest Parka, for example, retails for £3,100

A perpetually cheerful soul, “Nige” told me during our interview that he liked being nice to people. He was smart enough to realise that collaborations with other, larger brands made financial sense to a small design-led company like his. Partners in the past three decades have included Alpha Industries, Banana Republic, Converse, Eddie Bauer, Filson, Fred Perry, Gloverall, Henri-Lloyd, London Fog, Karrimor, Peak Performance, Red Wing Boots, Rocky Mountain and Umbro.

It was only in the past few years that his famous energy began to weaken as he passed through his seventies. He finally succumbed to a recurrence of cancer, dying peacefully at home in Jesmond on 11 June.