In My View by Eric Musgrave: Giving Scottish heritage a future

We can expect “a tsunami of job cuts” across UK clothing and textile factories later this year thanks to the imposition of higher operating costs in Labour’s Budget last autumn against the backdrop of continuing challenging trading conditions in almost all the world’s leading markets.

This was the gloomy prediction I received from a Scottish factory owner during the Pitti Uomo menswear fair in January. His downbeat assessment was a rare cloud in what was, for me, a rather uplifting and inspiring event.

Given what I wrote about the effects of the Budget in my January column I cannot claim to be surprised by my contact’s remark but the depth of pain he inferred was very concerning.

With all this going on, therefore, it’s very pleasant for me to highlight a UK textile success story, or more precisely a Scottish one.

The Glenlyon Tweed Mill in Aberfeldy, Perthshire was acquired in November by the team that owns Stewart Christie in Edinburgh, Scotland’s oldest bespoke tailor and a revival of a 200-year-old weaving business is now underway.

My long-standing friends Victoria “Vixy” Rae and Daniel Fearn are the business partners who took on Stewart Christie almost 10 years ago and have carefully revived and repositioned the business without losing any of the old-school charm that makes it so appealing to a certain type of consumer (like me!) who enjoys quality clothes and quality service.

The pair now plan to do the same with the mill, which boasts an enviable heritage. Up until 2012 it was the production unit for the celebrated country tweeds of Haggart of Aberfeldy, a legendary name in the niche world of robust Scottish cloths. When the company went bust, the Haggart name went elsewhere and appears to have disappeared from the market but the mill continued in a very small way as Glenlyon Tweed Mill, producing the type of cloth needed and appreciated by country estate gamekeepers and country estate owners alike.

In February I had an enjoyable couple of days introducing Glenlyon’s cloths to a good number of London bespoke tailors on and off Savile Row, plus a few upmarket ready-to-wear producers that would appreciate their quality.

I was accompanied by Isaac Hawkins, a cheerful 30-year-old who is the on-site kilt maker at Stewart Christie. An excellent example of the sort of young people who are embracing old craft skills as a career option, Isaac is very enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn about the arcane techniques of high-quality weaving and is splitting his time between the shop in Edinburgh and the mill in Aberfeldy, around 75 miles to the north-west.

We received a very positive response from most of the tailors we visited for the samples we carried with us. Certainly the classic 700gm / 25oz gamekeeper tweeds have distinctly niche appeal, but the lighter, softer qualities in 500gm / 18oz and 350gm / 12oz prompted many favourable comments and quite a few orders.

I wish Vixy and Dan and their business partners all the best in their new venture. I am confident they will find an appropriate niche for Glenlyon Tweed Mill but this is but a small ray of sunshine in a tough time for UK textiles. As the mill has only been ticking over for more than a decade, the new owners inherited only two workers, both with many years’ experience. The big challenge now will be to attract younger talent to ensure the expertise and skills of Scottish weavers is not diluted or lost.

As I have written many times in the past, a problem for my depressed Scottish friend at Pitti Uomo and my more confident pals at Glenlyon is that British manufacturers of textiles, clothing, footwear and accessories are, relatively speaking, so little known and so little appreciated by most of the general population and a hell of a lot of people in the fashion business. It is a precious industry hidden right under our noses.

I fear the reality in the foreseeable future is that most UK manufacturers will survive only as niche specialists – maybe that’s the situation already. It all makes me rather sad.

On a much more positive note, the inaugural People, Planet and Purpose Awards event held by theindustry.fashion in London on 27th February was a very enjoyable celebration of the work of quite a few young companies that are navigating the tricky waters of contemporary fashion.

I had a great time meeting up with friends old and new. I salute Lauretta Roberts and Antony Hawman for devising a format that was different to the familiar industry awards.

Here’s to the next one. I doubt even my powers of persuasion could get them to bring in more UK textiles-relevant categories for next year, but I might try.