Tweed

Some seven or eight years ago, full of nostalgia for a jacket a loving grandmother bought me as a small boy in the early sixties, I bought a Harris Tweed jacket. I saw it as another brick in the wall of middle age, but loved the colours and feel of the fabric and its robust practicality. Now, of course, Harris Tweed is the stuff of legend, used in every self-respecting fashion designer's collection.

One dictionary I looked at defines the adjective "tweedy" as;
"accustomed to, preferring, or characterized by the wearing of tweeds, as in genteel country life or academia: a large and tweedy colony of civil servants and government officials".
Clearly that definition needs to be revised.

Recent years have seen a welcome increase in tweed's popularity and a resurgence of the Harris Tweed industry in the Outer Hebrides. A classic has been revived. True to the theme of resorting to wearing classics in middle age, I have added to my tweedy collection over recent months and I will return to the subject of this remarkable material very soon.