The Harris Tweed industry has been lambasted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — for the enormity of using wool.
It causes “immense suffering,” it “wreaks havoc on the planet,” and “drives habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in the Hebrides … the UK’s 30 million sheep release huge amounts of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere.”
Accordingly, all the weavers of the Western Isles, as PETA berates Calum Iain Maciver of the Harris Tweed Authority, should abandon their flocks forthwith and warp their looms with … weed.
Hemp, yips Yvonne Taylor, is “a perfectly harmless plant, is green, clean, and kind, while the wool industry abuses millions of gentle sheep and pollutes the environment.”
And, should weavers not so swiftly “future-proof their business,” one gathers, we are on the brink of a new dark age — when cliffs crumble, mountains fall, the Hebrides sink, Trump snatches a third term and chlorinated chicken becomes sentient.
Still — “Harris Weed”? Whoa, man — far out. Think the peat-stack just melted …
There can, of course, be little reasoning with an outfit that, amidst much else, wants to ban the word “pet” and, I kid you not, even disapproves of milk.
No other cloth is both defined and protected by an Act of Parliament
But, after two excessively exciting decades for the Outer Hebridean cottage-industry — and it’s a colourful tale of royalty, elder statesmen, the CIA and even Fidel Castro — few weavers would blanche at the disapproval of Ellen Degeneres.
Harris Tweed is unique. No other cloth in the world so closely reflects its native landscape, no other cloth is both defined and protected by an Act of Parliament, and few other products have enjoyed so long its timeless, enduring appeal.
And there have been so many attempts to knock off an Clò Mòr — the Great Cloth — that, even today, with counterfeit textiles popping up all over the place, the Harris Tweed Authority is in near-constant litigation.
From the Italian chancer who launched “Harry’s Tweed” to the chain of Scots-tat souvenir shops which, in March 2018, was successfully indicted for abuse of the Harris Tweed trademark.
The Court of Session awarded the HTA its costs — and exacted a stinging fine of £25,000. This, the Authority intoned, “underlined how determined it was to ensure that Harris Tweed maintains its reputation as being a luxury product and with unique and special methods of manufacture.”
Harris Tweed must, by law, have “been handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides” — and only such cloth can be stamped with that Harris Tweed trademark; and only beady-eyed Harris Tweed Authority officials can do the stamping.
The wool is a blend of Blackface and Cheviot fleece — it need not necessarily be Scottish, though it must be “virgin,” not unpicked from old jumpers — and, despite PETA’s dystopian jeremiads, very little is now shorn in the Western Isles.
Our tale begins around 1844 when Catherine Herbert, Countess of Dunmore and milady of the Isle of Harris, commissioned yards of somewhat confected clan tartan from local handloom-weavers.
This cloth was of such quality that “Society” friends of the Dunmores began ordering it for themselves; by 1900 Stornoway businessmen had muscled in on the burgeoning trade — and it appealed on three grounds that still underpin marketing today.
Harris Tweed is a most durable, breathable and practical cloth, more or less impervious to rain and ideal for dressy outdoor pursuits.
It is a “craft” product — not something mass-manufactured, but woven by a single man or woman at their own homestead. And it is from the Outer Hebrides, remote and beautiful and Gaelic-speaking, romantic and “other” — every blended, multicoloured strand evoking moor and mountain, rock and lochans and seascape.
The main market, till well after the Great War, was the landowning gentry — not least for their legions of “outdoor servants.”
As that Downton Abbey demographic shrank, a no less lucrative one opened up overseas — for Harris Tweed “sports-coats,” preferred smart-casual garb for post-war American guys.
You have only to watch The Men From U.N.C.L.E, or eye snaps of such Fifties celebrities as Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, to be struck how many are wearing tweed jackets — and, for many years now, Harris Tweed has been the only fabric privileged (and protected) by name in US trade agreements.
President Kennedy himself chillaxed in Harris Tweed, at Hyannis Port the night in November 1960, he was elected — and, in 1966, Harris Tweed production hit its all-time high: 7.6 million metres of the cloth were shipped from the Hebrides that year.
It has always had high-end aficionados, not least the Royal Family. Edward VII girt his not inconsiderable frame in Harris Tweed. His grandson, the future Edward VIII, had miles knocked out in “Prince of Wales Check.”
Today, about 350 people enjoy year-round employment in Harris Tweed
The late Queen, in 1956, was presented with a bolt of the stuff on her first visit to Harris and Prince Charles, as he then was, visited a humming island mill in 1983.
Many years later, in 2017, his sister blew in to open an extension — and the Princess Royal invariably wears Harris Tweed when she regularly graces a Scottish rugby international.
But there is something very worthy about Harris Tweed — think Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple; Anthony Head’s Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and in newer, edgier decades, sales began implacably to decline.
The one exciting new market was in high-end designer couture — think Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Polo Ralph Lauren and Manolo Blahnik.
And there was the day in 2004 when Donald John MacKay, an independent crofter-weaver at Luskentyre in Harris, was pedaling his loom when his wife, Maureen, answered the phone.
It was some outfit called Nike. “‘I didn’t know who they were,” he confided two decades later, “but they requested a few samples. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear anything back.”
But they called again — with an order for 10,000 yards. Donald John mobilised all the weavers on the island, happily shared his “sett” — the threaded formula for Nike’s chosen pattern — and looms clattered joyously away everywhere for three lucrative months.
Nike duly launched a limited-edition female training shoe, the Terminator — complete with Harris Tweed tongue and Nike’s big tick — and, as if things could not get any better, Madonna was shortly papped wearing a pair.
But, just as things really started looking up, the last Harris Tweed baron standing — the late, intense Derek Murray of Shawbost — yearned for retirement, and in December 2006 sold his empire Brian Haggas, a 75-year old Yorkshire man apparently in the rag-trade since we were dodging doodlebugs.
“Beespoke tailoring” — producing bolts of Harris Tweed to designer-salon specification? Haggas didn’t want to know.
Instead, he quickly renovated the main mill in Stornoway, cut all the patterns that could be produced from about 2,500 to just four, and in short order ran up 75,000 dull, dull, men’s jackets.
Brian Wilson, 76, remembers the incredulity “when Haggas revealed his business plan to an astonished workforce and community. He intended to cut the number of Harris Tweed patterns down to four — not four thousand or four hundred but four.
“Furthermore, he intended not to sell the fabric to anyone — with the entire production committed to a range of men’s jackets, marketed through another of his companies, Brook Taverner.
“Anyone buying a Harris Tweed jacket anywhere in the world would have to buy a Haggas product. As a business plan, it was seriously bonkers.”
And, for the industry, the threat was soon existential — as Haggas now laid off his Stornoway workforce, even as his uninspiring jackets hung on Keighley racks.
Patrick Grant was just one aghast designer. A purist, whose tweed-fancying clientele should only have the best, but “these people are not going to use Harris Tweed if all they can have is brown, brown, brown, slightly blue, grey and brown.”
Harrods, at length, deigned to buy 3,000 of the jackets, even as frantic couturiers dashed up from Stornoway at whispers bolts and bolts of magnificently coloured cloth, in the banned old patterns, were hidden somewhere in secret storage.
But even as they hunted down these “Turin Shrouds of Tweeds,” Brian Wilson’s ear was increasingly bent by appalled friends.
Wilson — from Dunoon, young and long-haired and radical — had in 1972 founded the West Highland Free Press, a lively Skye weekly that for decades punched above its weight.
In 1987, at the fourth time of asking, the journalist was elected to Parliament and from Tony Blair’s 1997 triumph proved a diligent public servant, enjoying five years in assorted departments as a Minister of State.
Hopes for a Cabinet seat were dashed, it is widely suspected, by Gordon Brown, and in 2005 Wilson quit the Commons for a new life on Lewis with his young family.
One night he had a call from Sandy Matheson — Lord-Lieutenant of the Western Isles, the last Provost of Stornoway. Matheson had just had a brilliant idea. Haggas had bought the business, yes, and the big Stornoway mill — but not Murray’s lesser mill at Shawbost, now derelict and unloved
If investment could be found … well, could Wilson think of anyone?
Wilson at once thought of Ian Taylor — businessman, philanthropist, CEO of the Vital Group, whom he had first met during a ministerial visit to Cuba. The sort of man whose calls were taken at the White House.
“We both sat up with Fidel Castro until 4 a.m.,” Taylor later drawled of that initial Havana encounter, “drinking the last two bottles of 1956 Bordeaux donated by François Mitterand … ”
He had considered buying out Derek Murray, at Wilson’s urging, but chose not to proceed. A smaller, start-up gig was a different matter, though — and Taylor was now swift to agree. On one condition: the sometime New Labour politician must be chairman and front-of-house.
They knew they had to move fast, given all the fashion-houses insulted by Haggas. Indeed, Wilson was swiftly collared by the head of menswear at Ralph Lauren, “a loyal and prestigious user of Harris Tweed for decades. He was incandescent. “No supplier sacks Ralph Lauren,” he roared. “Ralph Lauren sacks suppliers!’”
There was one nervy moment. Derek Murray, jumpy as ever, agreed to sell the Shawbost mill in principle — once he had offered Brian Haggas first refusal. But the Yorkshireman, convinced of his own invincibility, cackled that Murray could sell it to anyone he liked.
Weeks later, in November 2007, Ian Angus Mackenzie — who’d memorably damned the dire Haggas jackets as perfect for the demographic “between sixty and death” — turned the key in the door of the Shawbost mill.
It was chill, it was dusty — but all the plant was still there, fit to wash and dye, card and slub and spin yarn with abandon, and to full and finish the returned and woven tweeds.
Meanwhile, the little mill at Carloway, several miles down the road, had been rescued by Alan Bain — Scots ex-pat, a Manhattan real-estate tycoon, President of the Scottish American Association and who would do anything for his native land save live in it.
Thus, by May 2008, the first tweeds in years rolled from Shawbost, two little mills were again in the business of supplying the world with Harris Tweed — and weavers could breathe again.
Brian Wilson had a flair for publicity and contacts to kill for. Stornoway hosted a glitzy Harris Tweed fashion show. International models jetted in.
He brought in Mark Hogarth — a sometime constituent — as Creative Director. The pair flew to British embassies all over the world, opening up whole new markets in the likes of South Korea.
Recoiling from yet more dung-coloured jackets, they sought out up-and-coming young designers; courted fashionable brands. There was new emphasis on accessories — handbags, wallets and purses, cheeky doorstops and iPad cases — and, for the first time in years, young folk on Lewis and Harris got into weaving.
Wilson rarely missed a trick. On reading an interview with Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck about his latest movie — Arlo, in which he played Tony Mendez, a real-life CIA man — he learned that, according to Mendez, Harris Tweed jackets (and natty chinos) were practically the uniform of CIA agents in the Seventies.
Harris Tweed Hebrides could not afford the CIA, nor Ben Affleck — but they did nab a happy Tony Mendez, and his wife, for a glitzy media-lunch in New York and the sort of publicity you cannot buy.
Wilson and Hogarth liaised, too, with an Edinburgh tailoring company, Walker Slater — making bespoke tweeds for high-end sporting events — and Wilson and Taylor even found themselves at Highgrove as guests for the Heir-Apparent’s Campaign for Wool — tough old Harris Tweed being the ultimate antidote to “fast fashion.”
Nor was Carloway left behind: in an audacious coup, they wove a light, exquisite creamy lambswool tweed for the 2009 wedding-dress of that Gaelic-song siren Alyth McCormack — who dons Harris Tweed for all her gigs.
The ravishing gown is today on proud display at Museum nan Eilean, Stornoway — and, today, less than half of all Harris Tweed woven (580,000 metres of the stuff, last year) ends up as men’s jackets.
There was a final twist. Brian Haggas did eventually get his Stornoway mill going again — the former premises of Kenneth MacKenzie Ltd — and, in September 2019, blithely made a present of the business to its manager, Alex Lockerby.
Not least, intoned Haggas and without a trace of irony, to protect the concern from falling into the hands of “financial vultures.”
Today, about 350 people enjoy year-round employment in Harris Tweed. Ian Taylor, sadly, succumbed to cancer in 2020. Brian Wilson stepped down as HTH chairman in 2022 and, last October, aged ninety-three, Brian Haggas passed away in Yorkshire.
“He will be remembered as an energetic and inspirational leader,” lamented Harris Tweed at Kenneth MacKenzie Ltd, “who had a real love for Harris Tweed and was a catalyst for the renaissance of the industry in recent times.”
Which is certainly one way to put it — whatever you’ve been smoking.
