Barbour

John Barbour, a Scot, set up in South Shields in 1894 selling oilskins to the sailors, fishermen and dockers of England's north-east, and his son Malcolm's mail-order catalogue soon carried them much further. The waxed cotton jackets that define the brand, the Bedale, the Beaufort and the Border, were designed under Dame Margaret Barbour in the 1980s and are still made in South Shields, where the family, now in its fifth generation, runs the company. Barbour holds royal warrants from the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III.