Tartan’s worldwide appeal is indisputable – from hotel rooms to palaces and stately homes, to catwalks and high street shop windows, this distinct pattern of stripes and checks is everywhere. It’s become so fashionable that the late Vivienne Westwood’s dying wish was that her funeral service be swathed in Harris Tweed MacLeod tartan – a wish fulfilled by Harris Tweed Scotland, whose owners Mark Grieg and wife Julie personally delivered the fabric to the English church hundreds of miles away.
But while tartan been appropriated by contemporary fashion designers and other cultures – the indigenous textiles of Indian Madras and East African Shuka cloth are said to have been influenced by it, and Japan is the second largest Scottish export market after the US, thanks largely to the tartan skirts of the Harajuku girls – it remains synonymous with Scotland. You only have to look at the kilts and shortbread tins that line Edinburgh’s Royal Mile or attend any Scotland-themed event (wherever it is in the world) to see tartan represented as a symbol of Scotland and kinship.
From 1 April 2023 to 14 January 2024, the exhibition at the V&A Dundee – the first major show of its
