Fabric Sourcing in London

Over the last few days I embarked on my second round of fabric sourcing- to tie in with a trip to the Paralympics (which incidentally- was rad).

I spent Monday completing Goldhawk Rd- where as usual the fabric was in my price range- but most of the finishes were way too modern- too many synthetics and whatnot- most of it was cheap but looked cheap. Although  in saying that, I did find some gems.
Interestingly I completely neglected to consider the potential embarrassment of showing my Much Ado Designs to all the fabric shop owners- most of whom seem to have Indian heritage...
Leonato certainly inspired a few laughs to say the least....
But the good thing is, no-one reacted with offense... so I guess I can't complain.
On Tuesday I hit Berwick Street. As most of my garments will be sourced rather than made, the fabric sourcing that I'm doing at the moment was not as focused on budget as it might have otherwise been. Primarily I was collecting samples that I felt gave the clearest impression of how I want the garments to look, but the sampling will not lead to actual purchase of that fabric, and will merely inform the supervisor when sourcing the final piece, therefore I could have plenty of fun sourcing expensive stuff from Broadwick Silks and whatnot.
Despite relative success, there are still some fabrics I am struggling with. For one, no-one will let me have a sample of Tweed- so sampling for the Don Pedro design featuring Green Herringbone Tweed is becoming a problem. Also I'm finding it hard to source for Beatrice, I got a lovely selection of turquoise trims, but nothing in terms of the deep red Silk/Silk-Chiffon for the trousers, and no patterned yellow fabric either!
So I think Southall is the next stop.
A problem that I REALLY didn't expect is that the orangey yellow of the Uniforms seems to be a very hard colour to come across. This spells less trouble for the actual production (As at the moment I think the most likely option is sourcing white military dress coats and dying them) but I would still quite like to have a sample of exactly the right colour to go with the designs. Maybe I could do some dying now- but it seems such a waste just for a few little samples.

Here are just a few selections from my sample-book I've been building-up: