Spinning the Ephemeral PDF - SMU Fashion Media

Fashion Theory, Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 283-304 

Reprints available direclly from the Publishers. 

Photocopying permitted by iicence only, 

©2005 Berg. 

Fiona Anderson 

Fiona Anderson is Senior 

Curator of Dress and Textiles a1 

National Museums of Scotland. 

Her published work inciudes 

chapters on "Fashion" and 

"Visuai Culture and Its 

Institutions" in Exploring Visual 

Culture: Definitions, Concepts, 

Contexts {Edinburgh University 

Press) and "Fashioning the 

Gentleman: A Study of Henry 

Poole and Co., Saviie Row 

Tailors 1861-1900" (Fasten 

7/ieOfy(4),200Q). 

f.anderson@nms.ac.uk 

Spinning the 

Ephemeral with 

the Sublime: 

Modemity and 

Landscape in 

Men's Fashion 

Textiles 1860- 

1900 

This article explores the links between the manufacture, design, and 

consumption of tweed cloth as a menswear textile in the late nineteenth 

century and urban and rural landscapes. Most of the now substantial body 

of research that may be linked together under the term the "new fashion 

history" has neglected textiles as an area of study. This article stresses the 

need to look again at textiles as objects of production th;it can play an 

important role in broadening and deepening our understanding of the 

complex processes of fashion. !t is evident that with the notable exception 

of the chapter by Lou Taylor entitled "Wool Cloth and Gender: The Use 

of Woollen Cloth in Women's Dress in Britain 1865-1885" in the publication 

Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity (Taylor 1999).,

284 Fiona Anderson 

there has been scant academic research about tweed cloth since 1973, 

when Clifford Gulvin pubhshed his detailed study The Tweedmakers: A 

History of the Scottish Fancy Woollen Industry 1600-/9/4.' This comprehensive 

work follows a typical methodology of an economic historian 

of the period, in that few if any connections are made between the production 

of the cloth and the consumers who wore the cloth made up into 

garments. 

This article explores the topic of tweed cloth as a menswear textile in 

the late nineteenth century with rhe aitn of expanding the consideration 

of the relationships between fashion in tnodernity and rural and urban 

landscapes. The article does not contest the idea that modern fashion is 

predominantly an urban phenomenon. However, by analyzing a fashion 

textile produced within a rural context it aims to complexify the assumption 

that late nineteenth century fashion may be understood simply in the 

one-dimensional sense of being related to the urban. Examining the 

history of tweed as an ephemeral fashion textile within the context of 

recent literature from cultural geography, empire studies, and gender 

studies presents interesting new perspectives about the relationships 

between fashion in modernity and urban and rural landscapes. The article 

argues the design of tweed constituted a blending, or intermingling of the 

dynamics of fashion and urban sartorial tastes and lifestyles, with rural 

environments and contexts. It thus eloquently epitomizes the dual role 

of fashion within modernity as encapsulating the transitory and the 

sublime (Lchmann 2000). 

Origins and Deveiopment of the IWeed Industry 

Tweed cloth of the late nineteenth century had highly specific origins, that 

gave it a particular named identity, that of Scotch tweed. Gulvin pinpoints 

the period from 1829 onwards, as the era in which tweed was transformed 

from hodden gray cloth, a local craft product made in the Borders of 

Scotland, into a fashion textile woven in a factory. At that time the Scottish 

woolen industry saw a drastic decline in the market for the coarse drab 

blue woolen cloth that it was known for and also saw the fancy patterns 

that were later known as tweed sold in London for the first time. This 

shift was partly precipitated by the adoption of another lowly cloth; the 

black-and-white checked plaid used by shepherds in the Scottish Borders 

to protect themselves and young lambs from inclement weather {Figure 

1). The shepherd check as it became known was adopted as a fashionable 

cloth for menswear in the late 1820s (Figure 2). Its popularity was to a 

certain extent fueled by Sir Walter Scott; however, its adoption as a men's 

trousering cloth may also be linked to Lord Brougham. The fashionability 

of this cloth was also encouraged by Archibald Craig, a cloth merchant 

from Edinburgh, and James Locke, a London-based tailor. The latter was 

initially based in Covent Garden, but around 1830 he moved to the more

Figure 1 

Scottish shepherd wearing a 

black-and-white shepherd's 

plaid, early twentieth century. 

Courtesy of the Trustees of the 

National Museums of Scotland. 

Spinning the Ephemerai with the Sublime 285 

upmarket location of Regent Street in the West End. At a similar time 

Locke ordered from Archibald Craig patterns of "a coarse woolen cloth 

black and white checked stuff, expected to be wanted for trousers," which 

subsequently received wider popularity amongst fashionable urban male 

consumers (Allan I960: 52; Gulvin 1973: 72; Stillie 1970: 310-11). 

This move towards a novelty-based trade was a significant departure 

from the previous products of tbe Scottish woolen industry and it signaled 

the beginnings of strong and important connections with London-based 

and international cloth merchants. Textile trade journals of the period 

indicate rhe reputation ot Scotch tweed for high aesthetic appeal and


Figure 2 

A group of four MPs outside 

the House of Commons, 

London, 1860. George Weld 

(1807-86). Conservative MP is 

wearing a pair of trousers in 

the shepherd's check. 

Courtesy of the National 

Portrait Gallery, London. 

quality of manufacture (Textile Manufacturer January 15 1878: 2). A 

Ha wick manufacturer quoted in a local newspaper of October 27 1855 

stressed this emphasis of the Scotch tweed trade when he encouraged other 

manufacturers to "Spare no expense on your wools . . . your dyestuffs 

. . . aim at excellency of fabrics . . . and beauty of design; repel every 

attempt to compromise" {Hawick Advertiser October 27 1855). Interestingly 

for a branch of the nmeteenth century textile industry renowned 

for the production of constant novelty and variety in design, the bulk of 

their cloth was designed for menswear (Ponting 1987: 84-7; Taylor 1999: 

42-3). 

In order to explore the theoretical issues dealt with in this article, it is 

important first to clarify the type of cloths that came under the generic 

name of tweed in the late nineteenth century. James Locke is linked to 

the mythology surrounding the origins of the name tweed in that various 

texts debate whether the word derived from a clerk working for Locke 

who misread the Scottish word tweel or twill (which was the weave 

characteristic of Scottish woolens at that time) for tweed, or if the name 

derives from the Tweed river in the Scottish Borders (Ponting 1987: 83; 

Stiliie 1970: 311). What is more conclusive as evidence is that the word 

tweed does not appear in any business data surveyed before the early 

1840s and that it was widely used after that throughout the textile and

spinning the Ephemeral with the Sublime 287 

tailoring trades (Gulvin 1973: 250). Today, the word tweed primarily 

suggests heavy-weight, rough-textured woolen cloths, similar to Harris 

tweed. However, the tweed industry of the late nineteenth century produced 

a much greater diversity of cloth than is signaled by contemporary, 

popular understanding of the term. The three principal classes of tweed 

that are regularly docutnented in trade literature of the period are Saxonies, 

Cheviots, and Homespuns. Saxony tweeds are fine and densely woven 

and have a soft, smooth handle. They are made from merino wools and 

the finest versions are indistinguishable from worsted cloths. Cheviot 

tweeds have a rougher appearance and a more open texture than Saxonies, 

although the finer versions were widely used as suiting and trousering 

cloths in the late nineteenth century. Homespun tweeds have the rough, 

coarse-textured appearance that is popularly associated with the term 

tweed today, with Harris tweed being the best known version of this 

category of tweed {Henry Ballantyne and Sons 1929: 75-79). 

These three classes of tweed, were also each available in a wide range 

of weights and a phenomenal range of fancy designs. Gulvin indicates the 

extent to which novelty and variety were central to the appeal of Scotch 

tweed. He states: 

The Scotch tweed trade was largely a "one-off" trade, with few 

lengthy runs . . . Such a trade put a premium on designers and 

pattern-weavers, who were expensive to maintain; large numbers 

of trial patterns had to be produced from which merchants could 

choose. A firm with an annual turnover of about 12,000 pieces 

made about 1,500 ranges of eighty to 100 patterns each in a year, 

or 150,000 different patterns. (Gulvin 1973: 159). 

The Scottish woolen industry continued to focus mainly on producing 

women's shawls and men's trouserings until the 1850s when the decline 

in demand for their shawls left them looking for new markets (Ponting 

1987: 80;Ciulvin 1973). The avenues that manufacturers chose to pursue 

involved producing tweed to be made up into men's shooting jackets and 

knickerbockers, styles that had just become fashionable as utilitarian 

sporting wear (Figure 3). 'T'he continued success of tbe tweed industry was 

therefore strongly linked to the growing popularity of specific sporting 

and leisure pursuits and the development of new styles of men's dress. The 

sports for which these tweed garments were worn at that period such as 

shooting, fishing, and deer-stalking were intrinsically linked to rural 

contexts. However, by the 1860s the utilitarian shooting-jacket style had 

developed into the almost identical lounge jacket, which was often worn 

with matching trousers, thus forming the modern lounge or business suit 

(Anderson 2000: 410-16). 

These changes had a significant impact on the contexts within which 

tweed was worn. Tailoring trade literature of the late 1860s period 

onwards indicates that Cheviots and Saxonies were widely worn within


Figure 3 

Party at Drumochter Shooting 

Lodge. Scotland. 1882. 

Courtesy of the Trustees of 

National Museums of Scotland, 

a variety of urban contexts, and that the image we have today of tweeds 

as cloths that were primarily worn in the country and not in the town, 

up until the early twentieth century is erroneous. For example, an advert 

of January 2 1869 in the Tailor and Cutter trade journal, for the Londonbased 

woolen merchants James Platt and Co., promotes tweeds "made 

expressly for us by Scotch manufacturers" that "For riding trousers, ot 

as a gentlemanly trouser for ordinary wear, or for suits, they surpass any 

other goods made." The Tailor and Cutter of October 2 of the same year, 

in an article on "Materials for Winter 1869-70,'" further stated that "for 

Suits, Check and Mixed Tweeds have been tnuch worn this summer and 

we think there will be the same tendency through the autumn." 

A previous study carried out on tbe sales records of the leading Savile 

Row tailor Fienry Poole and Co. suggests that in 1900, just over half of 

the orders sampled for some form of lounge suit or lounge jacket consisted 

of tweed. At that elite level of the international menswear market, tweed 

was primarily worn as informal morning wear in town, as pea coats, 

capes, and overcoats, and also as country or sporting wear (Anderson 

1998; Breward 1999: 49-61}. For example in Figure 4. Brooke Boothby, 

who held the typically upper-middle-class position of Second Secretary 

at the British Embassy in Vienna in 1889 may be seen wearing a tweed 

suit as urban, informal morning wear. 

It is likely that tweed would have been equally if not more prominent 

within the less occasion-specific wardrobes of middle-middle-class and 

lower-middle-class consumers of the closing decades of the nineteenth 

century (Figure 5). This is owing to the increasing dominance of the lounge 

suit as respectable work attire, the hard-wearing properties of the cloth

Figure 4 

Brooke Boothby, Second 

Secretary at the British 

Embassy in Vienna, 1889. He 

is wearing a morning coat and 

matohing trousers in a checked 

tweed. Courtesy of the 

National Portrait Gallery, 

London. 


(a fact that is frequently cited in the Tailor and Cutter) and the widespread 

production of cheap imitations of Scotch tweed designs. 

For example, Scotch tweed was identified by the trade journal The 

Textile Manufacturer in January 1878 as the most widely copied British 

textile product of the era. The article states "The newest patterns in the 

best Scotch tweeds, particularly, are objects which are very desirable in 

the estimation of all our competitors, while on our part there is a very 

strong desire to keep these new patterns from rhe hands of imitators." A 

later article in the same journal discussed tbe importance of "cheap tweeds 

and low class fancies" to the Huddersfield trade, thus showing how Scotch 

tweed designs were widely imitated by Yorkshire woolen manufacturers 

{Textile Manufacturer januaiy 15 1878:2-19). This imitation was so rife 

that "by 1906 it was estimated tbat about three-quarters of the 'Scotch 

Tweeds'produced in Britain were made in England" (Gulvin 1973; 147). 

Tweed was therefore widely worn by men within both rural and urban 

contexts from the late 1860s and particularly towards the closing decades 

of the nineteenth century. 

Examining surviving tweed pattern books of the leading firm R & A 

Sanderson in the archive at the School of Textiles of Heriot Watt University 

in Galashiels in addition to trade literature indicates that for the purposes 

of this article and its exploration of connections between landscape and 

tbe design and consumption of tweed cloth, it is useful to group tweed


Figure S 

Middie-class Edinburgh family 

photographed c. 1890. The 

father is a butcher and he is 

wearing a tweed suit. Courtesy 

of the Trustees of the National 

Museums of Scotland, 

production into three main categories.^ Tweeds, which for example are 

predominantly dark gray, with only subtle surface patterning might be 

categorized as mainly showing a relationship with exclusively urban 

contexts and activities (Breward 1999: 40). In contrast to this, articles in 

the Tailor and Cutter, along with contemporary sartorial etiquette books 

and photographs of people taking part in sport, suggest that bold checked 

patterns and homespuns were primarily sporting cloths to be worn in the 

country {The Major 1900: 19-21; Tailor and Cw^fer January 17 1901; 

Lambert 1991). Tbe third category, which from the evidence studied 

appears to be the largest, occupies a more ambiguous space, consisting 

of a diverse range of cloths that according to the specifics of each design, 

sbow a relationship with both rural and urban landscapes. These ambiguities 

of landscape are linked to the fact that rural and urban contexts, were 

deeply intertwined in the processes of manufacturing, designing, promoting, 

and selling tweed cloth. 

IWeed in Rural and Urban Contexts 

The Scottish tweed industry was mainly located in the Borders region, 

which is primarily rural and other significant tweed tnills of the period, 

such as Johnstons of Elgin and Crombies of Grandholm and Cothal, were 

similarly located in rural Fiighland areas. Fiowever, many of the leading 

cloth merchants who acted as intermediaries between the tweed manufacturers 

and tailors were based in London, thus forming a vital source 

of communication and feedback about which designs were selling most 

successfully (Fiarrison 1995: 49-51). 

John Allan in his book Cromhies of Grandholm and Cothal 1805- 

1960 discusses tbe role of James Locke the Regent Street tailor in expanding

Spinning the Ephemeral with the Sublime 291 

the sales of Scotch tweed to the international clientele who patronized 

fashionable London tailors. Fie states: 

Locke saw that the quality of the Scottish tweel and tbe novelty of 

design offered unlimited opportunity, for novelties could meet every 

desire for a change of fashion. He had genius as a salesman and it 

may be that he was the first great salesman of the Scottish woolens 

(Allan 1960: 52-3). 

Allan proceeds to claim tbat Locke gave more than just feedback on what 

was appealing to the London market to Scottish-based manufacturers, 

be also became directly involved in designing tweed cloths and eventually 

became more of a clotb mercbant than a tailor. London-based cloth 

merchants were linked primarily to urban tailors, wbose clientele developed 

their tastes within either urban, or a combination of urban and rural 

lifestyles. Owing to the fact that tbe Scottisb tweed manufacturers were 

primarily producing clotb to be made into bespoke tailoring and the design 

processes linked to bespoke tailoring are essentially about collaboration 

between the salesman or cutter and the customer (Anderson 2000: 409). 

This blending or intermingling of urban and rural contexts was therefore 

evident in the design processes linked to tweed, as well as the finalized 

tweed designs. 

The influence of rural landscapes on the characteristics of both tweeds 

worn in the country and those in my third category, where rural and urban 

contexts and influences are intermingled, is evident within company trade 

literature and the tailoring press of the era. For example, a promotional 

booklet entitled The Manufacture of Scotch Tweeds, produced by the firm 

of Peter Anderson Ltd, probably around 1900, clearly emphasizes the 

links of their cloth with landscape. It states: 

Many of the colourings in Scotch Tweeds have found tbeir origin 

from blending colours of the heather bloom, brackens, grasses, 

mosses and rocks seen on the Scottish hills and moorlands, there 

are mixtures of the browns, reds and gold which remind me of the 

moors during the autumn months when Nature runs riot witb 

colours. Manufacturers and designers of Scotch Tweeds bave received 

much inspiration from Nature's colourings {Christie n.d.: 4-5), 

In addition, tbe Tailor and Cutter of August 27 1870 under the title 

"Goods for the Season" stated that "In Cheviots we noticed more than 

tbe usual play of taste in both make, substance and combination of 

colours, from the native heather to the gold and orange mixtures. These 

goods are mostly plain, occasionally however, a few checks are seen." This 

description again makes clear links with the Scottish landscape and refers 

to the characteristic practice within the Scotch tweed trade of twisting 

different colors of yarn together, so that bright colors such as gold and


orange, provided subtle surface interest, rather than a stridently colored 

cloth overall (Gulvin 1973: 76). Also, the description of the Cheviots as 

"mostly plain" suggests that they were primarily intended to be wotn in 

urban settings. 

These references to the Scottish landscape might be seen panly as sales 

talk that had an imaginative resonance, within the textiles and tailoring 

trades and ultimately with male consumers. It also refers to a measure of 

genuine influence of rural landscapes and contexts on tweed designs. For 

example, the predominant account given for the development of many 

tweed designs is that they evolved from the black-and-white plaids worn 

by shepherds in the Scottish Borders (Ponting 1987: 78-80). In particular 

that simple design in a twill weave has been seen as the basis for a group 

of tweeds known as estate tweeds, or by the alternative name of district 

checks. These tweeds first developed in the 1840s linked to the desires of 

landowners to create a specific identity for their estate. One of the earliest 

estate tweeds was the Clenurquart, which was adopted by Caroline, 

Countess of Seafield on her estates from the 1840s onwards. This black 

and white check with the addition of a blue or red over check has widely 

and erroneously been known as the Prince of Wales check. It is one of 

the few seminal textile patterns that have remained popular in men's and 

women's clothing since the nineteenth century. The Glenurquart, like 

many of the estate tweeds, has constantly been adapted by manufacturers 

to form either new estate tweeds or commercially available designs 

(Harrison 1968, 1995). 

The emergence of estate tweeds was intrinsically linked to major 

economic and social changes within the Scottish Highlands. By the late 

nineteenth century the Highlands of Scotland had largely been converted 

into a series of private sporting estates and a minority of local people had 

taken on new occupations as ghillies, keepers, stalkers, and pony-men, 

outdoor servants who had skills and knowledge about the local terrain 

and animal life that was essential to those who wanted to partake in sports 

such as deer-stalking, grouse shooting, and salmon fishing (Dossena 2000; 

Mackenzie 1998: 28). Several landowners thought it necessary to create 

a livery for these servants, one that was distinctive enough to signal their 

connection to a specific tract of private land but that also provided a 

degree of protection both from the elements and also the watchful eyes 

of animals who were to be stalked as prey. Stiliie notes the connections 

with romantic perceptions of the previous clan system whereby: 

many of the new landowners and tenants did not have claim to a 

tartan but wished some distinctive garb for themselves and their 

estate workers. It was in this environment that the cloths which later 

became known as the District checks developed; the name tends to 

be misleading as the cloths were attached to some estate., organization 

or regiment rather than a district (Stiliie 1970: 328).


The term district checks makes more sense, however, when one considers 

that the distinctive characteristics of each pattern were supposedly linked 

to specific features of the landscape within a certain estate. However, 

although the Highland landscape varies in color and character between 

different regions, the differences are not so acute as might be suggested 

by the diverse range of estate tweed designs produced. Nor does the idea 

of one design per estate account for the major changes, particularly in 

the colors of the landscape over the months of the year. In addition, 

variations on many of the estate tweed patterns were made up for the 

wider market and this points to the fact that although estate tweed designs 

were broadly influenced by colors and textures from the Scottish rural 

landscape, the concept of tweeds designed for a specific estate is primarily 

linked to desires for status and fashionability on behalf of the estate 

owners. Also, the development of, and demand for, estate tweeds was 

undoubtedly encouraged by the tweed manufacturers as it provided a 

steady flow of orders, as well as increasing the desirability of their cloth 

within wider consumer markets (Gulvin 1973; Harrison 1968, 1995). 

Another explanation often cited for the appealing and complex patterning 

and colorful twisted yarns used in the manufacture of tweeds is that 

they formed a necessary sporting camouflage. If one examines the series 

of tweed patterns listed in the main two published accounts about the 

development of estate tweeds Our Scottish District Checks of 1968 and 

Scottish Estate Tweeds of 1995, there does appear to be an element of 

truth in the practical reasoning of fancy tweed designs as essential sporting 

camouflage, with colors and patternings derived from the Scottish rural 

landscape (Harrison 1968, 1995). Certainly sporting handbooks of the 

late nineteenth century stress the importance of dress in providing camouflage 

to the gentleman stalker in a country setting (John 1891: .300-1). 

However, this does not explain the phenomenal quantities of different 

patterns produced by the Scottish tweed industry in the late nineteenth 

century and their wider popularity in consumer markets, as both country 

and urban dress. Design in the tweed industry therefore clearly went 

far beyond the remit of what was required for practical protective purposes 

and had much greater links with fashion than has hitherto been 

acknowledged. 

However, despite the dubious nature of claims that the visual characteristics 

of estate tweeds were directly derived from specific tracts of private 

land in Scotland. It remains the case that the visual appearance and texture 

of many late-nineteenth-century tweed designs are influenced by rural 

landscapes. In addition, promotional literature and the descriptive language 

used by textile and tailoring journals suggests that connotations 

of the rural had a positive resonance with consumers. For example, as 

Gulvin notes, in the 1890s variations on estate tweeds like the Glenurquart 

and the Coigach were particularly popular, thus indicating an interest 

amongst urban male consumers in designs with rural links (Gulvin 1973: 

76).


IWeed, Landscape, and Modernity 

The design of these textiles might then be considered as constituting a 

blending, or intermingling of the dynamics of fashion and urban sartorial 

tastes and lifestyles, with rural environments and contexts. It is tempting 

to view this scenario simply as the mixing of contradictory, or opposing 

elements. Most recent literature on fashion has quite rightly posited strong 

connections between fashion, urbanization, and modernity. The move of 

vast sections of first the British and then the European population into 

urban contexts from the late eighteenth century onwards has been seen 

to have greatly heightened the importance of appearances and therefore 

fashion within social life. Urban contexts have also been seen as pivotal 

to the rise of newly sophisticated and dynamic ways of making, promoting, 

and selling fashion, particularly from the late nineteenth century 

onwards (Breward 1999; Entwhistle 2000; Lehmann 2000; Wilson 1985). 

The conception that modern fashion is an urban phenomenon therefore 

underpins most recent publication on the subject and I do not wish to 

contest the broad significanceor relevance of these arguments. However, 

exploring the history of tweed as an ephemeral fashion textile within the 

context of recent literature from cultural geography, empire studies and 

gender studies presents interesting new perspectives about the relationship 

between fashion in modernity and urban and rural landscapes. 

For example, as Matless (1998) argues in Landscape and Englishness, 

owing to the integral relationships between industrialization, urbanization, 

and modernity, conceptions of the rural are often understood in 

direct opposition to this, in other words in the one-dimensional sense of 

being anti-modern and traditional. Clearly, in order to explore in more 

depth the widespread popularity in the late nineteenth century of tweed 

designs that reference rural landscapes it is necessary to examine contemporary 

views and engagement with ideas of the rural at that time. 

Recent research within the study of landscape has focused on it as a 

process linked to the formation of social and subjective identities. For 

example, in 2003 the editors of the Handbook of Cultural Geography 

argued that: 

the idea of a fixed identity unambiguously belonging to one group 

and unambiguously expressed in space has been replaced by notions 

of more fluid identities belonging to particular subject positions 

which can vary in intensity and can be combined in many different 

ways, so challenging homologous explanations (Anderson et al. 

2003: 7). 

These ideas show clear links with recent developments within multidisciplinary 

work on fashion and identity. In addition, W. J. T. Mitchell 

in his book Landscape and Power argues that "Landscape is a dynamic 

medium, in which we 'live and move and have our being,' but also a

spinning the Ephemeral with Ihe Sublime 295 

medium that is itself in motion from one place or time to another" 

(Mitchell 1994: 1-2). This view of landscape does not make rigid distinctions 

between cities as mobile, constantly shifting spaces against perceptions 

of rural landscapes as "natural" and unchanging. Instead this 

understanding of landscape as an "activity" points to potentially important 

relationships between modern culture and the rural, it is interesting 

to consider this view of landscape in relation to historical developments 

within the environments that influenced Scotch tweed designs. 

The success of the tweed industry from the 1850s was intrinsically 

linked to an expansion in the popularity of specific sporting and leisure 

pursuits and by implication to radical changes in land ownership and 

usage within the Scottish Highlands. By the mid-nineteenth century the 

Highlands had been the subject of dramatic economic and social upheavals, 

which have been grouped together under the term the Highland 

Clearances. This involved the forced displacement of local people by 

landowners, who subsequently converted the large number of deserted 

small holdings into extensive sheep farms and deer forests (Dossena 2000: 

p41). By the 1850s many estates had been bought by English or Lowland 

Scottish wealthy gentleman and by the 1870s the emphasis in land usage 

moved even further towards the dominance of deer forests and grouse 

moors. For example, Mackenzie states that "No fewer than three million 

acres of Scotland were converted from pasture to moor and forest in the 

nineteenth century" (Mackenzie 1988: 20). This increasingly shaped the 

Highlands as a depopulated area that principally functioned as a sporting 

playground for the British and international wealthy elite. These changes 

are particularly interesting in relation to the consideration of landscape 

and modernity, in that the supposedly incontrovertible logic of human 

social progress creating more "developed" and less "wild" and "natural" 

landscapes is turned on its head through landowners creating suitable 

environments in which grouse, deer and therefore modern conceptions 

of sport and leisure would thrive. The modernity of these developments 

and their intrinsically commodified, rather than conservationist nature 

is further revealed by the fashionable, ephemeral nature of the tweed cloths 

worn by upper-, upper-middle- and middle-class consumers of this fashionable 

lifestyle. 

The late nineteenth century also saw an expansion in the tourism 

industry aimed at the middle class and the real "opening up" of the 

Highlands as a holiday destination. Small numbers of more adventurous 

tourists began traveling to the Highlands in the late eighteenth century 

(Lambert 1999). However, it took the literary endeavors of writers like 

Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, as well as improved rail links and scores 

of guide books, to help create the large influx of tourists of the closing 

decades of the nineteenth century (Whyte2002: 110). This further encouraged 

the commodification of that landscape, its transformation into an 

"object to be purchased, consumed and even brought home in the form 

of souvenirs, such as postcards and photo albums." From the late nine-


teenth century onwards the Scottish Highland landscape therefore played 

a dual role as "commodity and potent cultural symbol" (Mitchell 1994: 

15). It symbolized Highland Scotland as a part of the British mainland 

that represented a mythic time and a place, before and beyond the negative 

effects of industrialization. 

As Raymond Williams states "a working country is hardly ever a 

landscape" and the transformation of the Highlands into a sporting and 

leisure playground, helped to idealize its landscape within the British 

popular imagination (Williams 1973: 120). This mistaken perception of 

the Highlands as an unchanging and truly "natural" environment, also 

meant that it held associations with enduring ideals of masculinity. For 

example, it became one of the principal domestic British landscapes that 

had potent links with the late-nineteenth-century British imperialist cult 

of hunting. As Mackenzie states: 

hunting represented the most perfect expression of global dominance 

in the late nineteenth century. Hunting required all of the 

most virile attributes of the imperial male—courage, endurance, 

individualism (adaptable to national ends), sportsmanship . . . 

resourcefulness, a mastery of environmental signs and a knowledge 

of natural history (Mackenzie 1998: 50). 

Sporting handbooks of the period highlight the particular opportunities 

for the imagining of this imperial masculine ideal within the Scottish rural 

landscape. For example in his An Encyclopedia of Rural Sports Blaine 

(1852) states: 

Caledonia must indeed, from the nature of the surface of the country, 

long continue to offer powerful excitements to preserve the 

more masculine features of the chase, when cultivation and population 

have extirpated some of the most prominent objects of it in 

other localities . . . The stag, in a state of nature is still to be met 

with in this paradise of wild sports. In Mar forest, and the western 

parts of Ross and Sutherland, red deer yet offer to the southern 

traveller a realisation of those scenes which he has before only met 

with in story (Blaine 1852: 115). 

Despite the romanticized and mythic tone of Blaine's words he also makes 

reference to a distinctive feature of hunting within the Scottish Highland 

landscape, the need to climb mountains on foot, rather than hunting on 

horseback. This is evident in Figure 6, which features a deer-stalking party 

at Glen Finnan, of which the majority are wearing the tweed cloth thought 

suitable for such masculine sporting activity. In addition to the nineteenthcentury 

cult of hunting, there was also a strong relationship between sport 

in its broader sense and imperial British masculine ideals. In fact, as 

revealed by Mangan, the imperial warrior ideal that emerged in the closing

Figure 6 

A deer-stalking party at Glen 

Finnan, Scotland, late 

nineteenth century. Courtesy of 

the Trustees of the National 

Museums ot Scotland. 


decades of the nineteenth century was integrally related to the popularity 

and perceived worthiness of sport. It developed primarily in elite social 

contexts such as the public school or private sporting estate (Mangan 

1981, 1996). However, surveying popular literature of the period such 

as boys'comics and books reveals that this conception of masculine moral 

worth achieved a more widespread resonance within the British populace 

(Dunae 1980). This poses clear links between popular conceptions of 

idealized masculinity and the wider consumption of tweed, the characteristic 

cloth of the hardy sportsman, whose sartorial appearance was 

modern, yet indicative of unquestionable manly worth. 

The fluid possibilities linked to the imagining of landscape and gender 

identities through the consumption of fashionable cloth are revealed by 

comparing the contexts within which tweed outfits are worn by men in 

Figures 6 and 7. The deer-stalking party in Figure 6 are situated within a 

rural sporting space, whilst the young middle-class man of around 1900 

in Figure 7, who is also wearing a tweed suit, is relaxing within the 

explicitly urban and domestic setting of a garden in the town of Paisley. 

Comparing these images illustrates the potential for powerful and subjective 

notions of masculine identity and rural and urban landscapes to 

intermingle within the context of fashion in modernity. 

The positive re-configuring of conceptions of the Scottish landscape 

within British imperial masculine identities, may also in part explain why 

those who imitated Scotch tweed designs, tended to keep the word Scotch 

firmly attached to their cloths. However, the wider popularity o( tweed


Figure 7 

Young man and woman in 

garden. Paisley, Scotland, c. 

1900. Courtesy of the Trustees 

of National Museums of 

Scotland. 

within British consumer markets was also linked to a broader re-configuring 

of the British landscape in the era of modernity and imperialism. As 

Mitchell argues: 

the discourse oi imperialism, which conceives itself precisely (and 

simultaneously) as an expansion of landscape understood as an 

inevitable, progressive development in history . . . Empires move 

outward in space as a way of moving forward in time . .. And this 

movement is not confined to the external, foreign fields toward 

which empire directs itself; it is typically accompanied by a renewed 

interest in the re-presentation of the home landscape, the "nature" 

of the imperial center (Mitchell 1994: 17). 

Conceptions of landscape were therefore central to the naturalness of 

imperialist ideology and therefore to the imagining of the identities of


British men in that period. This points away from the sharp, closed 

distinctions made between modernity and urbanization on the one hand 

and the rural and the anti-modern on the other. Exploring the ambiguities 

involved with tweed cloth provides a more nuanced view, thus illustrating 

the twin abilities of fashion and landscape within modernity to play with 

our perceptions of time and place. If "Empires move outwards in space 

as away of moving forwards in time' within foreign contexts, then the 

British Empire moved simultaneously backwards and forwards in time 

in its re-configuration of the popular understanding of the home landscape" 

(Mitchell 1994: 17). This latter tendency to oscillate between an 

unchanging historical past and an ephemeral present, has much in common 

with the dual role of fashion within modernity as encapsulating the 

transitory and the eternal or sublime. 

It is useful at this point to clarify my use of the term sublime within 

the context of this article, particularly owing to its focus on landscape, 

fashion, and modernity. There is a predominant interpretation of the 

sublime within art historical discourse that links it specifically to the 

landscape genre of painting. However, this article does not explore the 

topic of landscape through the use of art historical methodologies or 

discourse. Instead of considering landscape aesthetics in terms of specific 

genres such as the sublime or the picturesque, the article examines how 

landscape circulates as a focus for the formation and imagining of identity 

in the era of modernity. 

A key recent text, which explores fashion within the context of modernity 

is Ulricb Lehmann's (2000) Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity. 

Lehmann reveals through close analysis of the work of leading theorists 

such as Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benjamin that 

fashion is pivotal to conceptions of modernity. The late-nineteenth- and 

early-twentieth-century writings of these authors foreground urban life 

and experiences as centra! to modernity and their ideas have also fundamentally 

shaped the conception expressed by many recent authors that 

modern fashion is predominantly an urban phenomenon (Breward 1999; 

Entwhistle 2000; Wilson 1985). However, despite the rather different 

theoretical focus of this article on a particular view of landscape and 

modernity that conceives of conceptions of both rural and urban landscapes 

as in dynamic motion and as processes that contribute to the 

formation of modern social and sartorial identities, writers such as Walter 

Benjamin are still highly relevant to the consideration of the ephemerality 

of tweed cloth and its links with rural and urban landscapes. 

Eor example, Benjamin in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" 

through citing the example of "The French Revolution (which) regarded 

itself as Rome incarnate" highlights the capacity of fashion in modernity 

to move across different landscapes, both real and imagined. He also 

highlights the transhistorical nature of fashion, by stating that "Fashion 

has a flair for the topical no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long 

ago; it is a tiger's leap into the past" (Benjamin 1999: 253). The focus of


fashion on quotation from the past means that it interrupts the historical 

continuum as Lehmann states: 

Through the quotation, fashion fuses the thesis (the eternal or 

classical ideal) with its antithesis (the openly contemporary). The 

apparent opposition between the eternal and the ephemera! is 

rendered obsolete by the leap that needs the past to continue with 

the contemporary. Correspondingly, the transhistorical describes 

the position of fashion as detached from both the eternal, that is, 

the aesthetic, ideal and the continuous progression of history. 

Through the Tigersprung fashion is able to jump from the contemporary 

to the ancient and back without resting solely in one 

temporal or aesthetic configuration (Lehmann 2000: xviii). 

This breaking of the historical continuutn through quotation of the past 

is very similar to actual developments and imagined perceptions of the 

Scottish landscape in the late nineteenth century in that the creation of 

the contexts for inherently modern, fashionable lifestyles, necessitated 

interrupting the "logical" continuum of human progress by turning 

millions of acres of pastoral land both backwards and forwards in time 

to form a "wilderness" playground. Although images of mountains, 

forests, and moors seem scarcely credible as having similarities witb the 

spaces of modern, urban leisure consumption such as the department store 

or the art museum. The changes made to the Scottisb landscape and 

tbe shifting popular perceptions of that landscape involved a similar 

commodification of people's time, experiences of the world, and their 

understanding of their identities witbin it. Even if one takes account of 

the inherently fluid and unstable relationsbips between landscape and 

masculine identities in the era of modernity. Tbe development of tweed 

as a fasbion textile tbat was widely worn by ail classes of men in botb 

rural and urban contexts in the late nineteenth century is inconceivable 

witbout these fundamental shifts towards new modern conceptions of 

landscape, identity, and fashionable consumption. 

In tbe consideration of tbe relationships between tweed cloth, rural and 

urban landscapes, and fasbion in tbe era of modernity it is useful to 

consider wbether the rural also influenced the style of men's dress at that 

time. Around tbe mid-nineteentb century sbooting jackets or coats, a sbort 

style made predominantly in tweed, but also in otber clotbs such as velvet 

developed. At that time tbese garments were worn primarily as utilitarian 

sporting dress to be worn in the country whilst partaking in sports such 

as shooting and fishing. The shooting jacket along witb the addition of 

matching trousers evolved into tbe lounge suit, a style tbat was to dominate 

the male wardrobe from tbe 1890s, up until the late twentieth century 

(Anderson 2000: 416). The basic elements of modern men's dress were 

tberefore formulated tbrougb a combination of rural and urban influences 

and contexts, despite the importance of dress codes linked to class and


tbe performanceof appropriate modes of formality within "society." The 

chaos of modern life in the age of the New Imperialism did not rigidly 

order people's imagining of tbeir identity, nor tbe phenomenon of fashion 

into the strictly defined categories of the country and the city. 

Conclusion 

Tbis article has argued that tbe referencing of rural landscapes was widely 

represented in men's fashion textiles, worn within both rural and urban 

contexts in the late nineteenth century. It has also shown tbar conceptions 

of landscape were central to the naturalness of imperialist ideology and 

tberefore to the imagining of tbe identities of British men in that period. 

Tbis points away from the sharp, closed distinctions made between 

modernity and urbanization on tbe one band and the rural and tbe antimodern 

on the otber. Although, I do not wish to contest the idea tbat 

modern fasbion is predominantly an urban phenomenon, tbe perception 

of tbis as exclusively tbe case, witb regard to the manufacture, design, and 

consumption of men's fashion textiles in the period of British imperial 

expansion is incorrect. Exploring tbe ambiguities involved witb tweed 

cloth provides a more nuanced view, thus illustrating the twin abilities 

of fasbion and landscape within modernity to play with our perceptions 

of time and place, if "Empires move outwards in space as a way of moving 

forwards in time" witbin foreign contexts, tben the British Empire moved 

simultaneously backwards and forwards in time in its re-configuration 

of the popular understanding of tbe bome landscape (Mitcbell 1994: 17). 

The latter tendency to oscillate between an uncbanging historical past and 

an epbemeral present, has much in common with the dual role of fasbion 

within modernity as encapsulating tbe transitory and the eternal or 

sublime. Tbis article has thus focused on the potential of theories of 

landscape to yield new perspectives on tbe consumption of fashion textiles 

and the broader relationsbips between men and fasbion in tbe era of 

modernity, as Matless states "one could argue tbat (landscape) the relation 

bybridity of the term, which is already both natural and cultural, deep 

and superficial, makes it an inherently deconstructive force" (Matless 

1998: 12). 

Acknowledgments 

I would like to offer grateful tbanks to Christopher Breward for giving 

me tbe opportunity to present a paper linked to this article in the Eashioning 

Identity strand at tbe UK Design History Society annual conference 

of 2003. Eurther tbanks are due to Juliet Asb for inviting me to deliver 

an extended version of that paper as part of the spring 2004 V&A/RCA 

Research Seminar series held at the Victoria and Albert Museum.


Notes 

1. This article focuses only on tweed linked to mainland Scotland; it does 

not discuss tbe production or consumption of Harris tweed. For a 

recent study of that topic see Hunter (2000). Stornoway: Acair Ltd., 

2001. 

2. R&ASanderson archives. RAS 6/1/31 Springand Winter Trials 1901, 

2 and 4. Archive of Historical Records and Business Archives, Scbool 

of Textiles, Heriot Watt University, Galasbiels. 

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