Dashing Tweeds

The company "Dashing Tweeds" has become a modern revival for tweed, designing vibrant and unique fabrics which display the quality and appeal of tweed with a new twist. The company began by the founder, Guy Hills wanting a new, yet traditional, tweed cycle suit. Originally tweed reflected the countryside to act as almost a camouflage for those hunting in the tweed sportswear. However, he had an idea to create tweed to camouflage into the city, urban surroundings.

This idea lead to developing luminous aspects to reflect city landscapes.

And also reassuring the original purpose of tweed, for comfort and leisure, creating modern styles to the traditional product, for example this modern cycle jacket.

Dashing Tweeds has also designed for companies such as:

Converse

For Henry Holland

Topshop collaboration

Swarovski Crystals collaboration

Tweeds

Tweed is another traditional, woollen, woven fabric which is created by either a plain or twill weave to give a check or herringbone pattern.
 
With useful properties such as being water resistant, durable and insulating, the tweed was firstly commonly used as sportswear in the UK for outdoor activities such as shooting and hunting.

One of the most famous as well as popular tweeds around the world is the Harris tweed. It is the only fabric that has its own legislation and has been hand woven off the west coast of Scotland for generations."Harris Tweed means a tweed that has been hand-woven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure new wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides." Only tweed made this way can be given the "Orb" stamp trademark to clarify it is genuine Harris Tweed.

Originally, the wool of black faced sheep living on the moors was spun to make the yarns for the Harris Tweed, as they were a widespread breed and their coats were thick, strong and coarse due to their resilience against the harsh weather. For generations, the weaver would live on a croft and look after their own sheep. Nowadays, different Scottish breeds are used to suit the modern demand for a lighter, softer fabric.

Once the sheep is sheared, the wool needs to be sorted, scoured and washed, then finally dried in preparation for dyeing.

The coloured wools are mixed to different dye recipes then carded, the carding process turns them into lenghts of wool and yarn. Once the lengths are then spun into yarns and put onto bobbins, they are sent to the weavers.

After the tweeds are woven they are stamped every two metres or so with the "Orb" logo. During the 1970's, advertisements for men's suits in Harris Tweed created such a trend that everyone wanted the cloth with the trademark. Vivienne Westwood even alluded to the logo to promote her own garments.

Tartans on the high-street

After investigating the traditional Scottish weaving of tartan, I have noticed its popularity on the market in high-street fashion.

ASOS.co.uk

"The grunge look" which shows how tartan checked shirts are incorporated into a specific street trend.

Dorothy Perkins "Go West" trend

River island "Chelea Girl" look

Superdry "Lumberjack" shirts

Company magazine

Creating my own tartans

I stumbled upon this amazing website; http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/design/
which allows you to create your own tartan quickly and easily. Simply choose a colour palette and alter the desired amounts of each colour to determine the check pattern.
I used my own photograph of urban lighting, below, to choose particular colours and created an endless amount of different tartans.

Modern Tartan

London, New York, Shanghai Street fashion January 2013

Jun Takahashi/Undercover, "Melting Pot", Autumn/Winter 2000-1

portrays contemporary fashion which continues to incorporate traditional tartan yet in new and interesting ways.

Tartans in Fashion

Although Tartans are a traditional and ancient way of constructing fabric, they are constantly in contemporary design due to their classic, nostalgic appeal and endless options of design.

"Anglomania" was Vivienne Westwood's Autumn/Winter 1992-93 collection which heavily featured and focussed on the classic beauty and qualities of tartan. Westwood has adopted the use of tartan since her collection in the seventies, where she became famous through her fascination of the "punk style". 

Westwood also believes that fashion is a combination of ideas between France and England and her designs reference historical elements and costume of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries using a collision of French haute couture and English tailoring to contextualise the "Auld Alliance" between France and Scotland. 

 

Westwood not only uses a diverse range of traditional and contemporary tartans but also designed, in conjunction with specialist tartan manufacturers, Lochcarron, her own tartans. For example, McBrick, which used a particular colour palette inspired by the London landscape and The MacAndreas which was named after Westwood's husband and collaborator, Andreas Kronthaler. The designer introduces a new tartan to each season, demonstrating the fabric will never go out of fashion.

According to Vivienne, the appeal of tartan is "heroic, rustic and traditional and because of this, romantic. It has the sense of dressing-up, even fancy dress and lends itself to role-playing, perfect for coquetry"

Anglomania, Autumn/Winter 2012/13
 Wallace Tartan Kilt

Scottish Weaving

The instantly recognisable woven pattern of Tartan has become the brand signifying all things Scottish. Recorded mentions of Tartan date back to the 16th century where highland weavers used the naturally coarse wool to spin and dye using organic locally found minerals, plant and vegetable dyes. Various Clans of Scotland each have their own particular tartan, of which depends on where in Scotland the family originates, determines the colours of the tartan due to the natural sources for dyeing that were around them. Red was a particular colour believed to have been only worn by the wealthy or for ceremonial and special occasions due to the rarity of natural red dyes, whereas on the contrary today red tartans are the most significant and popular.


Wallace Tartan


Black Watch


Rob Roy, one of the simplest of all tartans, which consists of weaving red and black yarns to create a checkboard pattern of three colour changes.

Traditional Scottish Tartan is created by weaving 100% wool yarn using a loom. However nowadays, the renowned pattern is often printed onto fabrics as it is less time consuming. Tartans are often also designed using digital methods, as the ability to explore the variety of colour and check combinations before choosing the desired design can be more time and cost effective.

The most common and well-known use for tartan fabric is for them to be pleated and made into the kilt, traditional Scottish clothing which forms an iconic unisex skirt, the word kilt  meaning to tuck clothes around the body as originally the tartan plaid was a blanket worn by Scotsmen by pleating it into a belt and wrapping the excess fabric around the shoulders.

Chloe pre-Autumn/Winter 2010

Traditional Kente Weaving

Kente Cloth is a traditional fabric most popularly woven in Ghana by the Akan people. It was known as the "Cloth of Kings" and only ever worn for extreme importance. Kente Cloth has now become more widespread, although still remains a sacred, royal cloth. It is made unique by the idea that every pattern has a very specific relation to a person, historical event or proverb. Original Kente cloths were black and white with perhaps red or gold, as they were created using locally grown and spun cotton and the available natural dyes. Nowadays, dyes are more accessible and so a wide variety of brightly coloured yarns are used in the weaves.