How Tweed Went From a Hunting Essential to a Beloved Menswear Fabric

During shooting weekends in the Scottish highlands, Araminta Birse-Stewart often finds herself biting her tongue. The textile weaver, who counts King Charles III as a client, can’t resist scrutinizing everyone’s tweed. “I find it deeply frustrating,” she says of the changes that manufacturing discrepancies can produce in the famed material.

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In this realm, consistency is paramount. Informed by the unique colors and textures of an estate’s terrain, tweeds are one of the earliest forms of camouflage. Since 1846, when the Aberchalder Estate adopted a unique pattern to clothe its workers, dozens of others have followed suit. (The cloth itself, originally called tweel, is of course far older than its trade name.) Each new tweed derives from one of the four patterns at right—and the variants are more colorful and diverse than you’d think.

Dallas native Tyler Sharp, who grew up hunting in Texas, recalls being perplexed by a gamekeeper’s nearly white ensemble on a trip to the Invermark Estate. “All of a sudden, he lay down on a slab of limestone and it made total sense,” he says. Sharp’s business, Modern Huntsman , now leads excursions in the region, often stopping at Campbell’s of Beauly (a royal favorite) so guests can get properly outfitted.

What’s miraculous about this tradition is that even though it’s upheld by a sort of gentleman’s agreement—mills typically won’t talk about which estates they make tweeds for, and they won’t reproduce the patterns for use beyond those boundaries—tweeds have been adopted by stylish guys the world over. And they’re rarely more appealing than in the early throes of fall.

Of course, you don’t have to go off the rack—or live near a loch. Glenlyon Tweed Mill owner Michael Gates-Fleming remembers designing a bespoke tweed for a client in the Caribbean, who requested: “Blue for the sky; turquoise for the water; pink for the conch shell; white for the sand; yellow, to represent the amount of gold you need to live in the Bahamas.”

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Coigach

Originally produced by MacDougalls of Inverness in the 1840s, Coigach was likely created for the Earls of Cromartie and their estate on the northwestern coast of Scotland. It’s now known colloquially as Gun Club thanks to its adoption by an American hunting society (debate remains over whether it was in New York City or Baltimore) in 1874.

Erchless

With an unusual pebbled pattern informed by Castle Erchless’s position on the River Beauly and the surrounding mountainous countryside, this estate tweed is free of checks and looks more like the local sandstone. Such lighter tweeds are common on properties bordering water and where angling is a frequent pastime.

Glenurquhart

Caroline, Countess of Seafield, named Glenurquhart after her estate just south of Inverness. Its pattern is bolder than its descendant, the Prince of Wales check, which King Edward VII developed by making a few adjustments to the original. His stylish grandson, King Edward VIII (the one who abdicated in 1936), is the reason it’s still so popular today.

Tartan

Distant cousins of the clan tartans so associated with the Jacobites, estate tweeds often feature plaid motifs. However, whereas tartan is associated with family, tweed is tied to the land. Playing with scale by mere millimeters, or incorporating a single rogue color into a length of yarn, can result in wildly varied yet highly personal results.

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