Traditions and Trappings of the TWEED Trail

by Cecile Paul · Published May 21, 2022 · Updated January 24, 2024

Feel free to share:

From Thom Browne’s Sensational 2022 Fall Collection to the Humble Woollen Mill Outlet on the High Street, TWEED is the Universal Code for an Iconic Country Lifestyle.

Photo Credit Shrimpton Couture
Alexander McQueen ‘Widows of Culloden

No need to wait until the ‘Glorious 12^th’, the twelfth of August to take to the hills in Highland gear when you can take to the streets any time in tempting tweed. The dish you’re after may not be that fat pheasant, but rather that elegant young heir to a wild Highland estate!

Photo Credit Telemmglpict
Stella Tennant ‘gone fishing’

Photo Credit Eilean Donan Castle
Highland dream home: loch, mountains and castle, not forgetting the good weather!

Photo Credit Adobestock
A native Highlander

Tweeds are synonymous with hunting, shooting and fishing, the Highland Estate and the grand gatherings that take to the moors and mountains in pursuit of game. The British Isles are still blessed with true wild patches – from the stormy Irish West coast to the rugged Scottish Highlands, places still empty of people and their trappings and very much the way it has always been. Civilization is limited to narrow winding roads, tiny cottages clinging to open hillsides and the odd crumbling castle sheltered behind a few ancient wind-bent trees. All of this, of course, overseen by the ever-watchful armies of sheep!

Photo Credit Square Mile
Take to the hills, the green Land Rover and isolated lodge

The hardy highland sheep gave us tough and trusty tweed, a subtly patterned weave of local wool, originally dyed with native lichen and wildflower pigments since the early 18^th century. Warm and cosy, neck-to-toe, traditionally the faithful fabric for farmers in Scotland and Ireland. Not particular to any one town or particular place, the name was apparently a mistake, when a London merchant mistook the old Scots word ‘twill’ for a description for the River Tweed in Scotland.

Photo Credit Barbour
Daniel Craig aka 007 in Skyfall in a Barbour jacket

Originally, a very fitting camouflage, those mossy greens and purple heather marls are so of the wild Highland landscape, and yet now unmistakably iconic. To boot, the trusty steed, the matching Land Rover, the Artisan’s bonnet, the green Hunter wellie boots, the obligatory Fortnum & Mason picnic hamper, the hip flask of the best Aberlour 18 year-old single malt whisky and we’re off (and don’t forget your shotguns and fishing rods)! And so to the expedition, the pursuit of ‘game’ of all sorts, from passion to pleasure, pheasant to fashion. Oh, and beware of Barbour jacket-clad secret agents having a Skyfall shoot out …

Watch Skyfall Movie trailer here:

Photo Credit Lovat
Tweed yardage

Photo Credit Daily Record
The iconic Orb Harris Tweed trade mark

Gamekeepers and ghillies (stalkers), lairds (untitled lords) and landowners have bedecked themselves in tweed for the great outdoors for centuries. The 19^th century fascination for wild Scotland with its vast Highland deer park estates, endless salmon and trout-rich fly-fishing rivers

and magical mountains hugging ruined castles, were all promoted by the writings of Sir Walter Scott who would put tweed on the map forever as the appropriate dress for the landed elite. Tweed garb was the sportswear of the day in the 19^th century, albeit mostly for the male aristocratic ‘game’, but it also provided an escape for women, letting them wear something practical, shapely and less socially confining.

Today Harris Tweed is the leading tweed brand, woven in small batches on Scotland’s Outer Hebrides Islands, still a cottage industry on the wild remote Atlantic west coast. Extensively used on the mainland, but also exported to over 50 countries – to haute couture fashion houses, New York tailors and multi-national companies – Harris Tweed is a stalwart cloth to the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto and Thom Browne.

Photo Credit House of Bruar
Soft and subtle wool tweed

Photo Credit Barbour
Take to the hills!

Photo Credit Barbour
Landed ladies

Scotland’s famous tweed houses, such as House of Bruar, Johnstons of Elgin and Barbour, with the shooting and fishing clothing traditions as their backbone, supply the finest of outerwear … indeed robust enough for a Scottish summer! Jackets, waistcoats, breeches, trousers, skirts, coats and bags are made of the hardy, yet subtly coloured tweed wools, often adorned with shiny brass, antler horn and local leather.

Photo Credit Who What Where UK
Tweed looks equally comfortable in an urban setting

Judy R Clark, a clothing designer based in Edinburgh, uses tweed in a contemporary, elegant and charming way, exploiting its subtle shades and tactile texture to the full. The late Stella Tennant, 90s supermodel and face of the Scottish Highlands, regularly modelled Isabella Cawdor’s relaxed minimalist high couture Scottish offerings. Isabella Cawdor’s aim was to keep with the tradition of keeping it simple, improving the cut, and exploiting the fall and weight of the cloth.

Photo Credit Judy R Clark
Judy R Clark’s Ocean Blue Tweed Dungaree

Photo Credit Judy R Clark
Judy R Clark’s beautifully tailored Ocean Blue Tweed Suit

Photo Credit Judy R Clark
Judy R Clark’s tweed assemblage from her Bespoke ‘Beach’ Range

Across the Atlantic, Ralph Lauren leads the US market for tweed, appealing to that same country set – the country house brigade with its estate, horses and ridings. Perhaps not as cold and wet as its Scottish origins, his tweed world operates on the same narrative as its British counterpart: the thrill of the wild, the comfort of the lodge, the stylish enduring traditional dress and accompanying lifestyle.

Photo Credit Ralph Lauren
From Ralph Lauren’s show ‘The Landless Gentry’

Photo Credit Johnstons of Elgin
Hound’s tooth coat

Photo Credit Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren’s young country house style

Photo Credit Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren’s stylish tweed

Photo Credit Bruce Webber
Stella Tennant in Isabella Cawdor, celebrating the joys of Highland life!

Photo Credit Holland and Holland
Stella Tennant in Isabella Cawdor

Photo Credit Business Insider
Johnstons of Elgin Range

Photo Credit Mulberry
Tweed couture

Perhaps the most poignant exponent of the tweed tradition was the late Alexander McQueen, who, in his amazing 2006 show The Widows of Culloden offered an insight into one of the darker aspects of his own, and Highland history. Using Highland fabric and fauna, a troubled McQueen’s ghostly tweed-clad figures strut out of a time past, as if the horror and loss of the clan way of life on the Culloden battlefield is still with us and waiting to be exorcised. Topped with fluttering birds wing head-dresses, suggestive of carnage and flight, the ladies are dressed in immaculately cut and crafted tweed coats.

Watch Alexander McQueen’s Widows of Culloden 2006 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD3b03CK9tU

Photo Credit Shrimpton Couture
Alexander McQueen ‘Widows of Culloden’ show 2006

Photo Credit Shrimpton Couture
Alexander McQueen ‘Widows of Culloden’ show 2006

Vivienne Westwood, outrageously creative as ever, is the headline-grabbing designer who firmly put Celtic traditional elements – from crowns and orbs to tweeds and tartans – on the global map. Her crazy fashion alchemy mixed punk and royalty, hence traditional tweed with bawdy burlesque should be more than expected! She can never say never! Perhaps a little more tartan than tweed over the years, Vivienne none-the-less injects an explosive glamour into this traditional ‘dyed in the wool’ culture, bringing fun, joy and humour. Her ladylike, exquisitely crafted, soft and subtle hand bags so contrast with her punk tweed thigh booted showgirls in the Vivienne Westwood X Vienna State Ballet Collection.

Photo Credit Vivienne Westwood
Her and Harris Tweed orb marked bags

Photo Credit 1stDibs
Vivienne Westwood’s burlesque and booted tweed

Photo Credit Irenbrination
Vivienne Westwood X The Vienna State Ballet

New York’s Thom Browne is obsessed with monochromatic tweed in his ever-expanding male female cross-over wardrobes. His preppy black, white & red plaids and tweeds dominate his ‘uniform’ collections, which are like reduced colour-way comic book prints of an alternative school and college reality. All converges into a cultural frenzy with his 2022 show, where sporting tweed meets gender bending in The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party of distortion, exaggeration and supreme impracticality! But hey, ho, genius has never looked more tweedy!

Watch Thom Browne’s extraordinary Fall 2022 show here:

Photo Credit Thom Browne New York
Thom Browne’s monochromatic tweed school uniform Fall 2022

Photo Credit Thom Browne New York
Thom Browne’s monchromatic tweed overcoats Fall 2022

Photo Credit Thom Browne New York
Thom Browne’s monchromatic tweed all-in-one hat coat dress

Like all good traditions, Tweed and its world was born from need and functionality. Now having woven its way around the world and into all layers of lifestyle and fashion, tweed is an apex fashion predator, hunting in all lands!

STOCKISTS