Designers cut from a different cloth
How Scots firm helped to push traditional tweed into the big leagues of fashion
In a secret green space off of Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, Paul Walker’s studio is packed with tweeds of every imaginable pattern, colour and texture.
The Walker Slater founder and designer thinks the hand-loomed textile can become as diverse as Italian denim.
“Tweed is almost becoming the denim of Scotland. The Italians do denim very well and Scots do tweed very well,” he said.
Traditional Harris tweed takes colours from the countryside – mossy greens, ocean blues and rugged mountain browns are on every rail in Walker Slater’s two Edinburgh stores – and Paul said it is equally functional and beautiful “warm, water repellent and carelessly elegant”.
Paul and business partner Frances Slater – a textile designer from Edinburgh – “produce a melange of textiles, a partnership that you know now to be Walker Slater”.
Paul said: “There was a realisation we had a great resource on our doorstep that wasn’t being utilised.
“I remember going down to the Borders and seeing some of the old Gardener’s fabrics – Gardeners was a mill at the time – and thinking ‘Whoa! These are fantastic’.
“We started making jacketing and it all moved forward from there.”
Borders tweed is generally a much lighter fabric than its Harris counterpart, and led Paul and Frances to create their first threepiece suit.
Milan, Rome, London, Paris and New York designers are all embracing Scottish tweed. Between 2009 and 2012, tweed output shot up from 450,000 metres to 1m meters. Much of this global interest can be linked back to designers like Walker Slater and the tweed industry’s own drive to stay relevant.
“The mills on Harris and in the Borders have done well getting the message out to the big players [in fashion] with a product they can buy into,” he said.
Walker Slater has enjoyed several high-profile collaborations with the Ryder Cup, Scottish football and the rugby teams, tailoring unique wardrobes for our national sides.
Paul repeatedly exalts tweed’s rich colours and textures, but he also draws attention to some of its lesserknown charms: “As a fabric and as a way of life it has a tremendous heritage. It’s protected by an act of parliament and specific to a sometimesforgotten region of Scotland.
“Sometimes we’ve been notified a delivery might be late due to the good weather allowing peat cutting to take place, so it has this human touch to it.”
He added: “We tried a lot of things – the development through from the really heavy tweeds where it didn’t work, right through to the Borders tweed using fine mixes of wool, cashmere and cotton, developing something that was very wearable in the daytime and for evening wear.
“We keep to trends that help tweed maintain relevance with shapes and fits that fit in with our ethos of ‘careless elegance’.”