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Interview with A Margaret Macleod

A Margaret Macleod
A Margaret Macleod
Sales Director
Harris Tweed Hebrides
Harris Tweed Hebrides

Famous for having fabric that lasts forever
From royalty and landed gentry to Hollywood icons and the finest designers of couture, the Harris Tweed cloth produced by the skilled craftspeople of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, has become a wardrobe staple. Harris Tweed Hebrides, an offshoot of Harris Tweed, was incorporated in 2008. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, A Margaret Macleod, Sales Director, Harris Tweed Hebrides, gives the story behind manufacturing of the Harris Tweed fabric--how a special kind of wool is sourced from Cheviots sheep locally found in Scotland and the UK, and then handwoven by home weavers staying in the small island of Outer Hebrides and processed in the mills of Harris Tweed to produce the final fabric.

Talking about the legacy of Harris Tweed, what is unique to Harris Tweed that makes it famous?

Well Harris Tweed (HT) is the only fabric in the world protected by the act of UK parliament that is really a set of guidelines for the production methods. We must use one of the most important production methods included in those regulations--that is HT must always be made of pure new wool and be handwoven and most importantly can always be manufactured from the yarn right through to fabric finishing under the act of Hebrides of Scotland. So we are process unique and we are absolutely location specific and location unique. In each stage of the manufacturing process, we always start with pure new wool. We always use British wool so there is very low footprint in terms of how far that wool has traveled. Sheep farming is always done on a very small scale as we are not such a big country. We start the process at the fibre stage. We carefully die and blend all of our own yarn shades and then produce all of our own yarn which is prepared for the home weavers. Weaving is always done by hand and is always done at the weaver’s home. The team here at the Harris tweed Hebrides mill where I'm based at--make that yarn and then prepare the yarn ahead of home weaving based on the pattern that the customer has selected and then that fabric is delivered to the weaver’s home…comes back from home weaving and this is carefully finished in the mill here on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Each and every stage of this process is about the people. We are people focused and every stage is carefully managed by the operator at that particular stage. We have a lot of people working on this fabric taking great care in terms of producing the highest quality fabric we can. They recognise the branding--the branding is very famous. The Harris Tweed brand with the orb symbol has been around as a registered trademark since around 1910. We are the UK's oldest certification mark still in continuous use. We have centuries and decades of history behind our production methods and since around the 1930s--when the industry was allowed to scale up slightly and middle produced yarn still produced in the islands of the Outer Hebrides…still small batch production but we were able to use carding equipment and spinning frames since the 1930s and that has allowed the industry to become the most important industry in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and allowed our industry to scale up a little bit. But since the 1930s not much has changed in the world of a Harris Tweed and the Harris Tweed industry has stayed very true to its roots in terms of how we manufacture and how we carefully produce each and every metre of fabric.
 

Who are some of the famous international designers who are advocates of Harris Tweed?

We are very lucky to have the designer couture houses from all over the world coming to us each year. At the moment we have a big collection with Polo Ralph Lauren and that's the development happened earlier in the year and it was very exciting for us. They work with us pretty much year on year. Ralph Lauren has a great passion for Harris Tweed and request that in his collections. We also work with Vivienne Westwood--again another huge advocate with our brand and she has been working with our industry since her own company started in the 1980s. Her collections are either bags or garments--we will always include a Harris Tweed fabric often designed along with our team here at the middle. She likes to produce unique designs handwoven in Harris Tweed. We also have a lovely collection this year with Max Mara-- again a famous brand and that's been really exciting for us. We have been working each season with Manolo Blahnik for shoes--a beautiful fashion brand that we are very proud to be part of.

How much of Harris Tweed fabric is consumed world over?

Well I don't think we have produced our figures for a couple of years. The industry produces generally around 1,000,000 metres over the course of a year. We ended 2020 in a better place than we thought we would considering that retail was basically shut. Everyone’s operation was closed. Our interior business remained steady through that time. So we supplied couple of companies with Harris Tweed fabric which is even more robust fabric but of slightly heavier weight for the interior sector. Their demand remained very strong throughout the lockdown because everybody was revamping their homes with all that time spent working from home. We have got two years but we are pleased at how the results ended up in 2020 and the same with 2021 where at the beginning of 2021 Europe was largely closed…a lot of the UK was closed. Trade shows weren’t happening. So fashion was kind of little bit of a standstill. But we have been working year-round and we have had some very good orders. I am very happy we are ending 2021 as well. We look forward to the world--all of the markets getting back to some normality.

How has Harris Tweed progressed through the years? What are the ups and downs it has faced in its journey?

Well Harris Tweed only refers to the fabric and it is not a company name and it's not a business in its own right. Harris Tweed Hebrides is fairly new in the world of Harris Tweed-- we were established in 2008 just in the middle of the last global financial crisis in 2007-2008. The industry was in quite a weak place at that point due to various factors. The industry had nearly collapsed after 100 years of trading. The industry was really on its knees. But the people that set up Harris Tweed Hebrides felt that there was a future and having traded for over 100 years using our very famous brands--there was a real passion and I believe there was a market still out there for Harris Tweed fabric. Harris Tweed Hebrides established the business at the end of 2007 and started manufacturing in 2008. Since then we have built ourselves up. We are a company with almost 65 employees. Unfortunately, we had to lose a couple of people last year due to the pandemic. We are almost 65 direct employees now and we provide home weaving to over 120 home weavers. We have built our company up into a UK wide brand. Harris Tweed Hebrides is recognised as the mill of choice when it comes to running and supplying Harris Tweed fabric. But we are very aware that our industry over the decades has had many peaks and troughs--woolen products went out of fashion and acrylics came in and fleece fabrics came in.. you know those have affected our industry over the years. But pre-pandemic I would say we were in a very good place--we were balancing out between the apparel sector and the accessory sector. Another new sector for our business has been the anterior sector. We are trying to balance production demands throughout the year because we have year round manufacturing and we are actually working very hard at that. We are thankful that the pandemic hasn't impacted us too badly but of course there was sudden impact on our business just like every other business.

How big a role is the Harris Tweed brand playing in the lives of people and the economy of the Hebrides where it is produced?

We have a population of about 20,000 people on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. So we are up in the northwest corner of Scotland. We are two and a half hour ferry journey from mainland Scotland. So we are pretty remote up here. You know finding sustainable year round business is really quite difficult. We do have tourism in this part of the world but tourism can be seasonal. So trying to find a business that will work in our rural economy is not easy. Harris Tweed has been around and it's a great passion of many people from this island for so long now that has Hebrides reviving that passion and ensuring we have built and have grown a business that can provide year round employment while producing beautiful fabric that we are all very much linked to in this community.. not an easy journey but we feel we have done a good job at moving the brand forward….reintroducing the brand into markets and most importantly providing sustainable rural employment..reskilling people because the industry had lost some of the key skills both on weaving and yarn production side, and finishing side. We have invested heavily in machinery and equipment here at our mill on the Isle of Lewis. We have invested very much in young people bringing in that next generation that had been missing from our industry through the late 1990s and the early noughties. It's really quite amazing because we are a very small island of a very small country and it's really amazing how far our brand reached over the years and we meet so many people when we are selling at trade shows who have a very fond recollecion through our brand--they either remember it from a parent or a relative. We are very unique in that way--a fabric brand that actually creates such passion and emotion in people. How big a role is the Harris Tweed brand playing in the lives of people and the economy of the Hebrides where it is produced?

How many patterns does the Harris Tweed swatch book boast of? Do you create custom tweed patterns for your clients as well?

Harris Tweed Hebrides as a company has about 650 patterns in our collection and we have a network of agents around the world that help us in terms of our sales to show these patterns to various customers and secure those sales. So the agent networks are so important to us and we are really thankful for the work that they put in in each of their different markets. We have a collection and we revamp that collection once a year. We revamp the collection for the autumn winter season…so we might drop some patterns and then we introduce maybe about 30 to 40 new patterns each year. Yarn colours will also get introduced each year as well of that standard collection. We also do a lot of the piece book work. A lot of our work is designed to order. For 2019 I estimate we produced just under 1000 different patterns that year for various customers. So lots of them coming from our collection…lots of them are archived books and patterns that are present in the industry for years..lots of new patterns and lots of piece book work as well. So a real mix on how the collection is presented on what fabrics are produced as genuine Harris Tweed fabric.

Which are your major markets today and which new markets would you like to explore?

About a third of our business stays within the UK. So that's producing for paddle manufacturers, producing for the giftware market etc. So smaller items, bags, hats and also producing for interiors. So about a 1/3 is UK and remaining 2/3 is export business--it goes into Europe. The main European countries we supply to are Italy France and Germany although we supply all over Europe and Scandinavia has been growing as recently as well. We also export a significant amount to South Korea and Japan. Far East is another very important export market for us. Last one to mention specifically would be the US--has for many decades been a huge supporter of Harris Tweed and continues to be a very important export market for Harris Tweed Hebrides. Again we look back a little bit pre pandemic--we were exporting to 50 plus different countries. Those markets remain a primary focus for us. We are exporting all over the world and it's amazing when you look through the end of the year information on where we have sent our fabric far and wide. In terms of new markets which are significant in growing--the Chinese market has become a very important market for us. They are recognising the value of the brand. We don't have a brand trading history there like we do in the Far East, in Europe and America and the UK itself. We are a new brand into China. But they have been very welcoming and very interested in our brand. We have really seen that market grow before pandemic growing through the pandemic and that will be a focus for us going forward as well. So it's really good to see domestic brands in China looking to genuine British textiles brands like Harris Tweed. That is exciting for us.

Are only craftsmen from the Hebrides employed at the moment? Haven't you ever thought of involving craftsmen from other nearby regions?

Harris Tweed act 1993--so that's the official name for the act of parliament that effectively governs our industry. The Harris Tweed act 1993 states that Harris Tweed can only be manufactured in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Scoured wool from sheep is permitted to come in but that is the only off island processing that's permitted when the sheep is sheared. We always have to start with the fibre stage. So we can't actually bring in services or utilise services on mainland Scotland or get the yarn from other countries which are very famous--there are so many different yarns and fibre qualities available. We are actually not permitted to use them within the rules of Harris Tweed act. We are a very local company using local services and local skills--that's what kept our industry unique and kept our district very precious to Scotland and to the UK. But ofcourse we use services that are external to the island. We rely on engineers, and we rely on expertise. We work very closely with other textile companies across the UK and further to Italy where we have very close links. So in other indirect ways we absolutely rely on the services that are available outside our region but that protected status of our geography for manufacturing is very precious to us and has remained one of the cornerstones of our industry--we have survived when many other UK textile brands have not survived so well past 100 years.

Could you guide us through the production process of the tweed fabric? Where is the raw material sourced from?

In terms of the production process--we always start with fibre. So we have to use wool only from sheep. The fibre is specified within the Harris Tweed act and it is the use of sheep wool. We must start at fibre stage and we should only purchase UK farmed wool--wool that has been grown in the hill farms of the UK and we predominantly use the Cheviots Hills sheep wool. So that's primarily a sheep that is found in the north of England in Scotland itself. So a lot of our wool is coming from the islands from mainland Scotland and from northern England. So from across the UK--which is a very small footprint in terms of transporting that wool--we are able to use the scouring services that are available in Galashiels and Bradford for that and we take in and raw fibre and start with the dyeing process. We always fibre die rather than yarn die or fabric dye..we fibre dye and then we blend all their own colours. We have about 60 base colours at the fibre stage. If we can leave the wool undyed--we will--we generally don’t bleach white..we use natural wool to lighten and blend our colours to get the shade we are looking for. We have a bit of 190 different yarn shades in our yarn string which we create--each and every one of those shades ourselves and are unique to our mill in Harris Tweed Hebrides. Once that wool is blended and then moves on to carding which cut the wool and create sloppings of wool that are in a neat orderly string effectively. But that's not strong enough for the yarn yet. From carding, the wool batches move on to the spinning frames that adds mechanical twist to the wool and gives it a strong yarn that you can then use for weaving. From that we will produce the warp. The width of Harris Tweed is always 150 centimeters wide which is the standard width. We have been famous in the past for producing a narrower width fabric but those products topped around the late 1990s under what the standard white fabric is in. Within that 150 width you have 1400 different warp threads being arranged in a specific order to create the pattern so that the warp, the weft, the card will be transported by Harris Tweed Hebrides. We will transport back to the weavers home whichever has been allocated the 50 metres batch. We weave everything in 50 metres batches. So that's transported to the weaver’s homes who will then carefully hand tie each and every thread into their loom and start their weaving project for the week. They will hand weave that fabric on their looms that are in their homes and then we will collect it from the home weavers. We will do the wet finishing process and the dry finishing and setting up the fabric along with that final authentication of genuine Harris Tweed--each metre of fabric must be inspected at the end of the process by the Harris Tweed authority to confirm that the fabric is genuine Harris Tweed. Theres quite a regulated process you go through to affect that fabric is Harris Tweed. Each of these processes requires our team and the self-employed home weavers to take charge here. Our mill is based on the Isle of Lewis and Harris--its one island-- we are located in the village of Shawbost which is a very small village of about 200 people at the west cost of the Isle of Lewis. So we are right at the Atlantic Ocean.

What are some of the latest marketing techniques you may be employing to make this fabric popular with the masses?

We are a fabric rather than a finished product brand. So we are all with the component part of a finished item. We produce the fabric. Most of our marketing is focused at trade. We do a lot of trade show activity. We are very much focused on promoting our sustainability credentials. As a company we are investing heavily on moving that agenda forward as a business. However, we also have great heritage, great provenance and people are looking for those when they are buying textiles. The fact that we are only using natural fibre..the fact we are still using manufacturing processes that have been around in the current form since the 1930s for the past century as well going further back than the 1930s. Those trade buyers are absolutely looking for something unique--is there a story to tell that our brand can also be their brand? We have that provenance..that heritage…we have that link to place and to people more so than many other fabric that are very good but possibly don’t have such a wise and unvaried and an interesting story to tell. We are very much focused on the credentials of our industry when we are selling and some of the techniques have changed in trade…obviously tradeshows moved to digital due to the pandemic but we have managed to reengage with the market. Tradeshows have opened up through 2021. We hope that activity will continue and we do many tradeshows and many international tradeshows as well like Premiere Vision-- these important events for trade buyers continue to be a major focus for our business.

What does the future hold for Harris Tweed?

We are looking forward to 2022. We feel our fabric and our industry has more growth to deliver and more potential. We know we have a product that's in demand and it's making sure we have the best quality of manufacturing-- the best design..the best colours and that we are getting to the right places where the buyers who are going to be interested in buying our fabric are basically there. So it's getting to those buyers. But I think there's still huge potential here at Harris Tweed Hebrides to grow our company and introduce our fabric to new countries where we aren’t really focused on at the moment. Although China has been mentioned, there will be other countries that absolutely want to hear about our fabric and are interested in what we have to offer. We remain absolutely focused as the company on our export activity and looking for those new opportunities to make sure we maintain our industry which is so important to the island economies here in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

In what way does the landscape of the Hebrides play a part in the creation of Harris Tweed fabric?

We are based on a very remote island, but it's a very beautiful island. We have many sandy beaches and a beautiful landscape up here in the Hebrides of Scotland and because we are designing our own colours we use that inspiration of the landscape and the seascape to blend these colours. You can really see particularly that the colours of the heather and pete coming through in our browns under purple mixes..look at our greens and the blues--you can really see how that relates to our seascape. So that’s the Atlantic ocean coming in on the island. Here we have many beautiful beaches, and those colours are inspiration to our yarns. We are very famous for the richness and depth of colours and that's definitely inspired by the landscape and the seascapes of the Outer Hebrides.

How resistant is the Harris Tweed fabric to wear and tear? What precautions should be kept in mind while washing it?

We are famous for having fabric that lasts forever. Many people say that the passion for our brand is still inspiring. Many people have jackets that have been passed to them by their parents or their grandparents. We were actually quite famous for being an extremely hard-wearing fabric. We are handwoven and we are woolen fabric so worsted..so it does need care in terms of fabric. It's something you need to look after and we aren't able to produce a washable fabric yet but maybe that will come. But at the moment we do have to recommend the dry cleaning just to maintain the stability of the wool/handwoven structure that we are very famous for being hard-wearing which is very sustainable in this current climate that we don't wear out very easily. So yeah, we are known for our longevity.
Published on: 10/12/2021

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.

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