The British National Costume: Of Tweed and Tension

Abstract

A phenomenological inquiry of the islands of Lewis and Harris provides a foundation for the cloth that is made there, which in tag and reputation conveys its relationship to “place.” Tweed is a cloth historically born out of place-based tensions, which express themselves socially and materially in the vehicle of this woven proxy. Using Harris Tweed as a primary case study, this tension is addressed in a narrative examination of insiders and outsiders to conclude that the fabric of tweed—as well as the nationalisms, social fabric, and industry so iconic to it—is constructed with contrasts and differences, and not in spite of them. This examination proves relevant to tweed’s historic role as “British National Costume,” especially in light of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote.

Keywords:

• tweed
• Harris Tweed
• place
• British nationalism
• Brexit

Acknowledgements

A version of this piece was originally included as part of the author’s MA dissertation: From the Land Comes the Cloth: the interwoven social and material tension of tweed in “place,” conducted in accordance with the completion requirements of University College London’s Materials, Anthropology, & Design MA.

I express my sincere and fond gratitude to Susanne Küchler for her inspirational work, as well as her invaluable interest, guidance, and input. Additional thanks are due to Adam Drazin, Elizabeth Corbin, and Christopher Tilley, Guy Hills, Kristina Macleod and the Harris Tweed Authority, and the people of Lewis and Harris.

With many thanks and much love, this piece is dedicated to my simultaneous fieldwork assistant, life champion, and mother, Karen.

Notes

1. Most recently the title of a photographic account of the Harris Tweed industry and the islands of Harris and Lewis by Ian Lawson, this iconic phrase has been present in Harris Tweed advertising since very early on. Upon inquiry, the Harris Tweed Authority was not entirely sure of its origin, but confirmed its wide use.

2. Plato also identified this quality in his use of weaving as a metaphor for statecraft (Danto [2006] 2012). The metaphorical fabric of society, as well as the literal fabric that clothes it, is constructed in the relationship between differences.

3. As one exhibit noted, the Hebrides were “always difficult to rule from the mainland,” and thus remained “virtually independent until the early 17th century” (Callanish Standing Stones Visitor Center).

4. Over the course of my stay, I encountered diverse people from the mainland unified in their missions to visit family members they had not seen for what seemed like unusually long periods of time, especially considering the actual mileage separating their homes. The trip to Stornoway from as far as Glasgow can still be accomplished in the time between an early lunch and a late dinner, the latter albeit on the ferry. However, it had been years since parents had seen children and grandparents had seen grandchildren. This fact infused the journey back to Glasgow with a tragedy that made the trip appear longer and more isolating than it had previously.

5. Originally referenced in the context of islands that are charted on maps but nonexistent in reality, and extended to the use of islands as settings for stories that are both true and not true (Chamberlin 2013, xii, 94).

6. The United Kingdom seems characterized not by unity per se, but by the parallel existence of varying groups of insiders and outsiders that are unified (or not) on various overlapping scales. This assessment is supported in various works on the subject of the British national identity (Ward 2004; Gamble and Wright 2009).

7. The Harris Tweed Association was the predecessor of the Harris Tweed Authority prior to the parliamentary intervention in 1993. Established in 1909, the Harris Tweed Association Ltd held the right to the Harris Tweed trademark (what is now called a certification mark) and thus, while met with controversy and disregard, the definition of the cloth it designated. This history is well-documented in Janet Hunter’s The Islanders and the Orb (2001).

8. This is the subject of the three-part documentary Tweed (BBC Four 2009a; 2009b; 2009c). See also Catherine Harper and Kirsty McDougall’s article “The Very Recent Rise and Fall of Harris Tweed” (2012).

9. The health of the community (aka fertility), she argues, can be assessed through “identity indicators” observed in the accommodation of incomers: “‘Incomerness’ in both a past and present context fits within the notion of ‘the social space (Ardener 1989), and the ‘social space’ has been able to accommodate positions for people anywhere along the incomer-islander continuum” (Kohn 2002, 144).

10. Appropriately, the authority that the Harris Tweed Association garnered through its connection with London has been at various times perceived as less “authentic.” During amendment discussions on the definition of Harris Tweed in the 1930s, the Lewis Harris Tweed Association (a body with rival interests) referred to the original Harris Tweed Association as the “Harris Tweed Association of London” “in order to lend weight to [their] claim … to be considered the authentic voice of the industry in Lewis and to invalidate any claim of the existing Harris Tweed Association that they were the guardians of the industry as a whole” (Hunter 2001, 111, emphasis added).

11. This neutralizing quality, suggested briefly in folklore of the Hebrides and various other descriptions of each uisge mythology, is distinctly articulated in C.J. Cherryh’s fantasy adaptations of Celtic mythology: The Ealdwood Stories.

12. The support for the 2014 independence referendum seemed to fulfill the prophesy, as presented by Robert Colls, that “crisis will emerge in an unavoidable constitutional dispute between the Scottish and British parliaments since ‘no Scottish parliament, not even a Unionist one, is going to miss the opportunity of using the Edinburgh parliament against the London one’” (quoted in Ward 2004, 7).

13. This statement borrows from Linda Colley’s assessment of Britishness as summarized by Ward: “It [is] possible to be Scottish and British” (Ward 2004, 3) as “identities are not like hats … human beings can and do put on several at a time” (Colley quoted in Ward 2004, 3).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kelsey Erin McClellan

Kelsey Erin McClellan is a recent graduate with Distinction of University College London’s Materials, Anthropology & Design MA. She holds a BA with Honors in Fashion Design from Kent State University, and worked as a textile, surface, and fashion designer before beginning her postgraduate studies. She is currently employed as the Co-ordinator of Art & Culture at Art of Cloth.

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