"When Harris Tweed Isn’t" by James Taylor

There are many pleasures associated with buying vintage clothing. There’s thrill of the hunt as you enter a new thrift store or trade show, wondering what treasures (if any) await among the musty drabness, the tingle of excitement when a ‘phone call or email comes in from someone who knows I collect vintage clothing, asking if I’d like to look at the stuff Grandad left in his attic before it heads off to the thrift store or landfill. There’s the pleasure in finding a long-unloved tweed overcoat, and spending time making the minor repairs to bring it back to use, keeping someone warm. And there’s the speculative pleasure involved in wondering how something got where it did—I still have no idea how that mint-condition chocolate-brown Poole topcoat ended up in the back of a Church thrift store in small town Ohio. And even if something is beyond rescue—a much-stained 1960s sports jacket in bleeding Madras, or a moth-eaten dinner jacket, custom made in 1956—there’s still the simple pleasure of imagining what events these clothes might have been worn at, and what manner of man had them made.

And these speculative and avaricious pleasures are joined by another type of pleasure entirely—the pleasure of the education that a mysterious label can sometimes bring.

   

In my own case this started with the label on a Harris tweed jacket. If you’re reading this blog you’ll probably be familiar with both Harris tweed and its classic trademark “Orb” emblem, which looks like this:

But in one jacket I found the label looked like this:

This was weird. This was clearly marked as Harris tweed, marked as handwoven, and came from the right area of Scotland. But it wasn’t an Orb. It was a Shield. And the name of the company behind the trademark was weird, too—The Independent Harris Tweed Producers, not the Harris Tweed Authority.

What’s going on? Is this Harris Tweed, or not?

A hint to the answer came from a 1958 edition of The Glasgow Herald, which reported that a newly-formed company, The Independent Harris Tweed Producers, were challenging the Harris Tweed Authority’s monopoly on calling their cloth Harris tweed. Why? Because there was a strong demand for Harris tweed in the American market, and the IHTP wanted in. And, yes, you can guess what was driving the demand then—not just post-war American prosperity, but the increasingly popular (then as now) Ivy League look, in which Harris tweed was a mainstay!

There were differences between the Shield tweed of the IHTP and the orb tweed of the HTA. The latter was only from Scottish wool, while the newcomers used wool from elsewhere the latter was spun, dyed, and finished in the Outer Hebrides only, whereas the newcomers would spin, finish, and dye anywhere in Scotland, and the Orb tweed was to be spun in crofters’ own homes, whereas the Shield tweed could be factory-made.

So, what happened? Lawsuits, filed by both sides--in 1961 by the Shields and 1962 by the Orbs. (Clearly, America was influencing more than just tweed production!)

And what happened? Well, take a look around your closet—do you see any Shield labels there, and, if you do, are they recent? The case went to the Edinburgh High Court, and was decided against the Shield faction, with Lord Hunter holding that for a cloth to be Harris Tweed it had to conform to the definition of the Board of Trade, namely that for a cloth to be Harris Tweed it must be  “a tweed, hand spun, hand woven and finished by hand in the Outer Hebrides, with ‘Made in Harris’ or ‘Made in Lewis’ or ‘Made in Uist’ etc. added as appropriate’.” The Shields’ tweed didn’t meet this definition, and so was not Harris Tweed….. And hence no more Shield Harris Tweed labels would legally be produced.

So, if, while searching through vintage tweeds, you find something labeled Harris tweed with a Shield label, rather than an Orb, you’ve found a rare relic of a almost-forgotten but very heated dispute concerning the real nature of this canonical fabric.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes Harris Tweed isn’t! 

On the Subject of Guest Posts

I wasn't quite sure, if I was supposed to write anything about the upcoming guest post, but I decided to do so. Mostly because this is another personal highlight for me and for After the Denim. 

Some of you may know James Taylor by the name of Tweedydon a mainstay of both Styleforum and Askandyaboutclohtes. I know him by the name of James because I have had to send so many thank you notes to him for helping me ordering stuff in the US. He has been so friendly, kind and helpful, that I felt like an ass, when I approached him, asking if he would do some blogging for me. I knew, I was adding to the endless list of favours, I already owed him. 

When I asked him, he immediately caught the Raymond Carver reference, and candidly suggested that he could write a post called "What We Talk About, When We Talk About Tweed", which I took as a yes. I'm still hoping he'll do that post. He didn't do it as his first however. Instead he wrote a great post called "When Harris Tweed Isn't", which I'm sure a lot of you will enjoy. What James doesn't know about Harris Tweed and tweed in general isn't worth knowing. Besides that I consider him an expert on trad style, clothing history, philosophy and I'm sure, he has thousands of other talents. Some of these talents will hopefully be exposed in coming posts by Tweedydon.

To me this is the pinnacle of After the Denim. This is what I imagined, it could be. My hope is still, that people with genuine passion, interest and knowledge will chip in an occasionally write a post about something of their own choice in order to ad to the diversity of the subjects here.

Therefore I would once again like to encourage people to contact me if they want to write for After the Denim.

"My First Watch" by Rasmus Jakobsen

I'm a watch enthusiast. It was a quartz-diver from Citizen that sparked my passion approximately 10 years ago. I was on my way into the military, on a 12-month self-chosen conscription with Den Kongelige Livgarde (The Royal Life Guards), and of course I had to have a watch with me  that could withstand the hardships in the field. I was born as a gear-freak, so it felt like an obvious move.

I spent a long time looking for the perfect watch, and it was probably due to Frømandskorpset (the amphibious attack and infiltration unit in the Danish Defence) that I ended up with a Citizen, as they used this particular watch in service. I figured, if it was good enough for them, it was probably good enough for me.

Unfortunately I had to face the fact, that the investment of around DKR 3000, which was a great deal of money for me back then, had made a impression on me too big to handle. This meant, I could not even in my wildest dreams imagine it being used - or rather abused - during military service when I finally got the damn watch,. And with this new realization I of course had to put the watch away in a closet and let go of the idea of me being equal to the guys of Frømandskorpset.

But the experience got me going. It was obviously not an infatuation with the movement, as the diver was an quartz, but the solid construction and high reliability of the clock fascinated me to such an extent, that I began absorbing an enormous amount of knowledge on military watches - with the diver being the absolute starting point.

My interest in watches has never declined. Much has happened since my innocent love for a quartz-model, but the fascination of these small wonders is alive and well. Today I concentrate solely on mechanical watches (automatics and hand-wounds). I still geek military watches (and even to great lengths), although I now have moved on to sports and dive watches from the 50s onwards.

I hope that my future posts on this fine blog will provide you readers with just a humble insight in the wonderful world of mechanical watches. If it gets too intimate, you are very welcome to speak up, just like you are more than welcome to drop comments and inspiration if you find it relevant.

Best regards,

Rasmus

Worth a Listen: The War On Drugs

Things have been a bit slow the last couple of days due to other obligations. I haven't forgotten about my dear readers, which will hopefully increase in numbers and I still hope that everyone will chip in with comments, ideas, critique, recommendations or what ever you may have.

In the coming week I'll be able to present the very first guest blogger here on ATD, if everything goes according to plan. I started this blog hoping that friends and acquaintances with an interesting perspective would also ad to what ATD is. This will materialise soon.

I have also noticed that Blogger isn't any good, when it comes to pictures, so I'll be setting up a Flickr account, so you can see the pictures in a higher resolution. The pictures from the Dahlman post were done by Rasmus, and he put a lot of effort into it, but I now see that the current format doesn't do them any justice.

In order to give this post some sort of substance, I would like to recommend a band, that I have been listening to for a long time, The War on Drugs. They do not have Kurt Vile on guitar any longer, but they are still creating stunning music with references to giants like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.