Fabric Knowledge - Harris Tweed

I would like to make a follow up to the post on Ventile to another legendary British fabric. This is even more legendary, namely Harris Tweed.

Harris Tweed is the only fabric in the world, that has its own legislation (remember this post?) and it is quite easily recognized by the Orb logo. For a tweed cloth to be qualified for the title Harris Tweed it must be made of pure virgin wool, that has been dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides, and it must also be woven by people living in the Outer Hebrides. In their own homes or sheds to be exact.

I won't be going into much more detail, so if you feel a slight lack of information, then please rest assured, that James Taylor AKA Tweedydon will return with more posts on tweed and Harris Tweed in the future. If you have any questions regarding Harris Tweed, let me know, and I'll do my best to answer them myself or forward them to James. He is the expert. But please let me tell you, that if you haven't had the pleasure of touching the heft of a Harris Tweed, then start hitting your local thrift stores - or high street shops, as a lot of modern brands are using Harris Tweed in special make-ups.

When I first saw this book available for pre-order, I added it to my basket and ordered it along with some other books, which I had been meaning to order for quite some time. Well, I forgot, I actually e-mailed James about the book, as the very first thing. But then I ordered it. And I'm glad I did.

"Harris Tweed - From Land to Street" by Lara Platman is a nice book, that covers the subject of Harris Tweed. If you already know some, you will probably not learn anything, substantially new, however the pictures of the home-weavers and their looms are, what makes this book worth anything. To me at least. They are small portraits of true artisans, which have a craft, that can't be replicated anywhere in the world and it shows, that you don't need much room - or light - to create some magnificent patterns and textures within the boundaries of tweed.

Here are some pics, that I took from the book.

When mentioning Harris Tweed, I think we should also pay attention to the blog, The Croft, which is about a man, who has returned to the Outer Hebrides to take up weaving himself after having spent some time in the city. The blog has all the links and information, you need on Harris Tweed and finally it is quite good a keeping somewhat updated on all the "new" products, that are being launched using Harris Tweed.

I found these pictures on The Croft, and I couldn't help but share them. They are taken by the photographer Ian Lawson and apparently they haven't been manipulated in any way. They will be published in a book with the title "From the Land", which will be released within a year or so.

"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.