Harris Tweed; unique, nature friendly and gorgeous!

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In honor of the Fall 2012 pre-sale available exclusively at the Camp out at Kaight sale until this Sunday. I want to share a few stories. As you know for Fall 2012 we are using Scottish tweeds. Not just any tweed , but world famous and a whole century old, hand woven Harris Tweeds. Ever since the Scottish invasion of the eco-venture, we have been relishing in all things Scotland; castles, heahter, kilts, and of course the tweeds. Part of the inspiration for the Fall 2012 collection was Scotland. However, being from the land of almost naked 24/7 I never expected to fall in love with tweed! Last March, I attended an event in the American Scottish Foundation for a conversatory about Scottish craftmanship, weaving, sheep and all things tweed. I met Malcom Campbell the sales director of Harris Tweed and fellow textile designer. He kindly shared with me a beautiful and interesting video about how a tweed is made. After seeing the video, I was very curious about tweed. I emailed Malcom a couple of times, he put up with all my questions and was gracious enough o let me share them with all of you here, it’s not a formal interview but I thought he had some interesting facts about tweed making in Scotland. It made me want to go visit the mill so bad!

Here are the best bits of our conversation:

What is the name of the sheep that has the best wool for Harris Tweed?
The breed of sheep that gives the wool for Harris Tweed is the CHEVIOT SHEEP. First flocks established in 1372, moved to Scottish Highland by Sir John Sinclair, and then moved in earnest by the Duke of Sutherland in 1796 which led to the Highland Clearances from 1812 to 1820 . (Go on to You Tube and listen to the song ‘ Hush Hush, time to be sleeping’, very emotional words.)The wool of the Cheviot is 28 micron to 35 micron . The wool of the Australian Merino is much finer ay 15 to 19.5 micron.
How do you dye the fiber now and how was it dyed before?
Currently the fiber not the yarn is Vat dyed with Coal tar dyes that allow for strength of colour and fastness. When natural dyes were used, sheep or human urine was used to make the colours fast. This would not be allowed today for health and safety reasons , as well as the resultant finished odour !!!
Vegetable dyes included the following;
  • Lichen and crottle for a deep red or a purple brown
  • dock root, hawthorn or alder for black
  • heather for dark green
  • sloe berries and elder berries for blue
  • privot leaves and broom for green.
  • birch bark for fawn
  • white water lily roots for brown
  • bracken, teazle, bog myrtle for yellow

Below is the video Malcom shared with me and , also Harris Tweed has a newly revamped website with a really good Blog!


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