Two Welsh brands come together in celebration of contemporary Welsh culture
Nation.Cymru Staff
Two Welsh businesses championing the country’s culture and craftsmanship have come together after Cardigan-based denim maker Hiut paid a visit to London’s first Welsh-themed café.
Hiut Denim, founded in 2012 by husband and wife David and Clare Hieatt, was established in Cardigan following the closure of the town’s largest jeans factory nearly a decade earlier.
At its peak, the factory employed around 400 people and produced 35,000 pairs of jeans each week for Marks & Spencer, before manufacturing moved overseas to Morocco in 2002.
Hiut chief executive Johann von Loeper has called Cardigan one of “the great denim capitals of the world.”
“Then, in 2002, the work was moved offshore,” von Loeper explained. “Four hundred artisans lost their livelihoods overnight. The lights went off. A craft that had defined a town was suddenly without a home.”
Hiut was created to “reverse that story”, set up with the explicit aim to bring jobs in denim back to Cardigan and celebrate the skills that were lost.
Now the brand has carved a significant space in the industry, with just under 70,000 followers on Instagram, its founders awarded honorary fellowships for Aberystwyth University, and its workshop receiving a visit from the Princess of Wales.
During a trip to London for a photoshoot on Sunday 3 September, members of the Hiut team stopped at Bara, a Welsh-themed café which opened in Peckham earlier this year.
Founded by chefs Cecily Dalladay and Zoë Heimann, Bara serves a mixture of traditional and contemporary Welsh-inspired food.
Cecily, who was born and raised in south Wales and previously competed on MasterChef: The Professionals, opened the café with former Pique Café head chef Zoë in February 2026.
Their breakfast menu features Swansea Breakfast and pancakes, alongside treats like bara brith and lunch options like Caerphilly cheesesteaks and laverbread, with much of their produce sourced from Wales.
The pair have previously explained that while not strictly a Welsh café, they wanted to “champion some of the best produce that Wales has to offer”.
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Speaking to the Hiut team, Cecily explained: ” It hadn’t actually started off as an idea for a Welsh cafe. It was just a cafe to start.
“I had found some inspiration through a group called Club Creative Cymru who had really inspired me to embrace my Welshness and everything that is Welsh.
Zoe added: “It was around the time of St David’s Day and Cissy was doing a Welsh pop-up supper club and using loads of really, really cool Welsh supplies which we use some of now.
“We were so blown away by the quality of all the produce as well that we were like, oh, we have to use this. It just got more and more Welsh as it went along. People loved it.”
Sharing images from the visit on Instagram, Hiut said the team had “ordered a bit of everything”, even managing to squeeze in a shared pancake.
Describing the food as “delicious”, the Cardigan company praised Bara as “a wonderful example of Welshness evolving into contemporary culture”.
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