Spinning the Ephemeral PDF - SMU Fashion Media

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