Stitches in time: what next for British textiles?
Time. There’s either too much of it or never enough, as it gallops away before slowing to a standstill. In our youth, we think summers last for ever, but our twilight highlights how fast they hurtle past.
Since lockdown, time has gone at a glacial pace, painful in parts, as people became insular. I watched this from two viewpoints: first, as a mother of three small boys, having to occupy each second, minute and hour without the buffer of schools, play-dates or day trips; and second, from a loftier outlook as the brand guardian of DC Dalgliesh, the world’s only dedicated hand-crafted tartan mill. The matriarch in me wanted to wrap my wings around this treasure in the hope it would ride the storm no one could have predicted for business at the turn of the new decade. As furlough forced the looms to fall quiet, it felt as if my heartbeat had halted.
For a decade I’ve watched, written and commented on our vibrant textiles industry. I sat moved to tears as Karl Lagerfeld lovingly shone a spotlight on Scotland at the Métier d’Arts show in Linlithgow Palace in 2012. As cashmere, tweed and tartan ethereally wafted past me in the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, I was schooled by the auld alliance on how cool our collective community really was.
And what a lesson it was. Barrie, a Scottish knitwear brand founded in the Borders in 1903, had just been bought by Chanel, ensuring its survival from administration. Like Pringle of Scotland before it, the company had fallen foul of previous owners’ mismanagement, plunging our industry into some of its darkest days. The scars of job losses and factory closures are still felt almost 30 years on. But much like Barrie, Pringle was plucked from the precipice by a foreign family who understood the importance of heritage and its preservation. I am so grateful to the Fangs and Wertheimers for understanding that time is the true definition of luxury.
It takes a long time for wool to grow over the winter on those marvellous Mongolian mountain goats, and almost as long for farmers to hand-comb those soft lightweight fibres that trap heat at sub-zero temperatures. Then they come to Scotland, to be plunged into our geographically soft water and spun into wool. And this is where the magic happens. You see, anyone can make cashmere, and whisky, for that matter. Other countries do it pretty well too. But what makes ours stand out, and the reason why it is sought-after the world over, comes down to two irreplaceable things: the water and the artisans.
As rain falls from the sky, soaking into rocks filling our reservoirs and lochs, it lays the foundational component that cannot be forged by any other nation. That water filters its way into our clothing, our food and drink sources. When the water is infused with these incredible luxury ingredients sourced from around the globe, something special happens. You can taste it in the whisky and you can feel it in the textiles.
Then there are the artisans, who hold more than 200 years of heritage in their hands: weaving, warping and knitting passed from one generation to the next over decades. They have been at the coalface of innovation and tradition, delivering unrivalled quality to international design houses and global consumers alike. I share some of these stories with one of my oldest friends, Gill Brown, in our podcast A Guide to Luxury. We talk about luxury from the jumping-off point of Scottish textiles, but ultimately come back to time being the true definition of the word.
So when those looms went silent, I had to remind myself that our industry has seen a lot over two centuries: wars, pandemics, financial crashes and consumer changes, all the way down to business mismanagement and family feuds. These stories are woven into the fabric like wearable history. Some mills didn’t make it, while others innovated around uncertainty, cut their cloth accordingly and continued to deliver what people want.
This leads to my final thoughts on time. Fashion has been getting a massive kicking over the past few seasons. Designers were beginning to experience extreme creative fatigue as they frantically flung out infinite collections that constantly ended up on sale. The speed at which everything was racing meant it was impossible to offload anything to anyone without the next new thing falling off the design conveyor belt.
As fast-fashion retailers began nipping at the heels of luxury, clone collections arrived on the high street before orders were fulfilled at luxury houses; the beast that is fashion began to eat itself. Then came Covid to cool everything off, and the industry was forced to act fast. People began to ask questions of where this need for new was coming from. Customers were blamed for their insatiable consumption, then that argument was thrown right back at brands as we all searched for answers about sustainability and ethics.
It’s only when we allow ourselves the luxury of time that we can digest, pause and reflect. That space gives us capacity to change and grow, reflect and restock. The items we choose to cover our bodies with are so much more than fleeting fashion. They hold memories and have emotional weight. They have been saved up for and savoured; spilled upon and sweated in. Our time, be it emotional or financial, means something, and that isn’t disposable.
Values matter. People matter. Traditions matter. Narrative matters. Those words echo across our industry and resonate with a far-reaching diaspora. People invest their time in us because we value theirs. That’s why I know we’ll still be standing in another 200 years.
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