The need for English tweed
THE Duke of Sutherland, so Hardy Amies recalled, used to drive south from the Highlands in a brown Rolls-Royce upholstered with tweed, stopping en route to switch into his black, leather-upholstered, ‘town’ Rolls-Royce to continue his journey to London.
The image of tweed as a country cloth derives from its traditional use for sportswear. Estate tweeds developed for shooting and stalking as camouflage for the hill, with a reputation for being tough-wearing and weatherproof. They were woven from the thicker, native wools long used by Scottish and north-country mills, which gave tweed its image of being a rough, coarse-textured cloth.
However, says textile manufacturer and merchant Richard Martin, ‘tweed is a perception more than anything else. It’s hard to define because there’s no technical definition. Any twill (cloth with a diagonal patterned structure), woven using
