Any story about yarn is inevitably threaded with cultural history; it’s impossible to disentangle textiles from clothing and fashion and therefore from the political, social, and economic landscape, the literal fabric of our society. Looking at prevailing styles and the material choices that designers make today and it’s clear that conversations about fibre, manufacturing and waste are becoming more urgent. I hope that we might look back on this decade as the one that pivoted our understanding of our own environmental impact from passive observers to active changemakers. Designers are incorporating artisanal handcrafts, looking to repurpose their archive, and celebrating repair and re-use in an - in some cases actual - patchwork of fabrics and textures. Tweed is one of those textiles that conjures up a rich heritage and for me its inspiration and influence is as multifaceted as the colours of its ‘neps’, travelling the breadth of my own textile career to the current landmark Chanel exhibition at the V&A in London, right back to the start of Rowan as weavers .
One of the first jobs I had as a design executive in the textile industry was to accompany the CEO of Courtaulds to lay off 2,500 employees at a mill in the Scottish borders. It wasn’t my judgement call, and I’m sure I wasn’t privy to the myriad and complex business decisions that had led up to the event, but the reality of the industry came into sharp focus for me then and has continued to have a significant impact on the choices I make since – both professionally and personally. These were skilled workers in a factory producing millions of pounds worth of knitwear for UK high street retailers each year, and the loss of those jobs not only had a detrimental effect on the livelihood and personal life of those individual workers, but also on a wider socio-economic scale for British manufacturing. This is just one story of many within the textile industry, which suffered great losses during the 1980s and 90s, unable to compete with cheaper manufacturing from abroad and the unprecedented increase in the mass-produced ready-to-wear consumables that dominate fast and ultra-fast fashion today. It’s a reality repeated across much of Europe and the United States as well, with a loss of skills and a devaluing of clothing that is now imbedded in the consumer psyche.