He's the star of the BBC show Great British Sewing Bee, and one of the most successful tailors in Savile Row.
But menswear designer Patrick Grant has admitted that his early introduction to big labels came from a source more akin to Trainspotting than Savile Row - Hibs football casuals.
Speaking exclusively to The Herald Magazine, Edinburgh-born Grant says he was introduced to some of the biggest labels of the 1980s and early 1990s by the clothes-obsessed fans of the club at the time.
The interview forms part of tomorrow's bumper 60-page edition of The Herald Magazine, which celebrates autumn fashion.
The magazine also has features on the current renaissance in hand-knitting and why all things Scottish are taking the fashion world by storm, as well as the usual lively mix of food, travel and columnists.
Grant says: "I remember being given a pair of Sergio Tacchini tracksuits bottoms by a Hibs casual friend of my sister's who'd nicked them. He was 5ft 6in and I was 6ft 2in so he said: 'Here, you have these.'"
Around the same time, as an ice-cream seller in Princes Street Gardens, Grant, who was at private school at the time, worked beside a Hibs fan who robbed tourists of their designer labels.
"That was when I got introduced to labels like Chevignon and Chipie and Stone Island," he said. We'd be in the booth opposite the bandstand and a couple of Italian tourists would come through in Stone Island jackets and he'd nip off and get on the payphone and ring his mates.
"They'd follow these tourists, hold them up and steal their clothes, which they called 'taxing the tourists'. But back then there was nowhere in Edinburgh you could buy these labels."
To read the interview in full, buy The Herald on Saturday
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