made in Britain -

MILL OF THE MONTH: Stephen Walters

Photography by Ant Jones

Fit for a King or indeed a Queen is an expression we don’t hear much nowadays but one that would work well when talking about our jacquard fabrics woven for us by Stephen Walters.

The silk weaving company founded in Spitalfields in 1720 is now based in Sudbury, Suffolk and has been making fabrics for royalty for hundreds of years, major commissions include Queen Elizabeth II coronation robes and wedding dresses for Princess Anne and Lady Diana Spencer amongst many others.

Here at the Dashing HQ we are easily satisfied with the best so working with Stephen Walters is a natural choice. Regular loom weaving is a process by which the vertical warp threads are lifted together to form patterns such as twills and herringbones. These looms have been around in various forms for thousands of years and are what we use most of the time for our classic tweeds.

Jacquard looms have much more complex mechanisms by which individual warp threads are lifted, enabling highly complex patterns and even photographic images to be woven into cloth. The technology dates back to the 17th Century and includes innovations such as the invention of punch cards the earliest form of binary data storage later adopted by computers. We can thank King Louis XIV for renouncing the Edict of Nantes and causing skilled Huguenots to flee France and bring us the technology.

As with many powerful tools the skill is in control; we have used Jacquard weaving to provide an element of humour to our designs that would not be possible by regular weaving. Our Threadbare design is woven in pure cotton with the idea of emulating a garment worn to threads, we thought it amusing to use the Jacquard loom to give the supposed warp and weft an open wiggling shape as if stretched with age. The scale of the design does contain a regular repeat but this adds to the optical element of the fabric. The cotton cloth adds another dimension to our staple of woven wools and makes up in to a delightful summer jacket.

Our Exploded Houndstooth is another playful idea executed on Stephen Walters’ jacquard looms. The idea was to extrapolate a classic houndstooth design to a scale not otherwise possible on a classic loom, a zoomed in version of a weave made with a fine silk weft on a cotton warp. The resulting fabric is arresting to look at yet strong enough for a wild night out, perfect for a player and fit for a king of clubs.

Our jacquard designs are now also available through our Dashing Classics range meaning they will be stock supported going forward. However if you wanted these designs in a slightly different colour way, this is also possible but at a premium through our bespoke services. To find out more, do email Naomi@DashingTweeds.co.ukwho looks after all our cloth production.

P.S – *SAVE THE DATES*

We are also hosting two events in September for our official womenswear collection launching on the 17th September. To RSVP, please click here.

We will also be celebrating a private view of a new collaboration with 1960’s celebrity tailor, Dougie Millings on the 18th September. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

Dashing Tweeds, tweed, menswear, tweeds, British tailoring, made to measure, British tailors, London, Shetland Jig cloth, design, sackville street

Time to Big Up British Wool

“We built this city on Work and Wool”. No not Jonathan Ross on a karaoke night out, but the true history of Norwich and many other English cities. It’s hard to believe nowadays just what an important resource British wool used to be. Norwich in the Middle Ages was second only to London due to wealth created from wool exports, and to this day politicians have a constant reminder of this when the Lord Speaker rises from the Woolsack, a stuffed bale placed in the House of Lords by Edward III in the mid 14th century.

Britain has over 60 native breeds of sheep, more than any other country and the wool from these most useful beasts was highly sought after especially in Flanders where the best weavers worked. A large focus of the Hundred Year War with France was to protect this trade and when conditions became intolerable many Flemish wool workers decided to come here and set up their looms around Norfolk, Suffolk and the Yorkshire Dales.

The weaving industry started to flourish with help from the government who passed laws including one in the 1570’s which insisted all Englishmen had to wear a woollen cap to church on Sundays. A law which should again be enforced for people going to yoga classes I feel. The influential Campaign for Wool started towards this with their Woolly Hat Day event and more importantly the patron Prince Charles gathered leading members of the industry a couple of years ago to Dumfries House for the signing of a declaration to help the wool beleaguered industry. The annual Wool Week event is also growing awareness since its inception in 2015 when flocks grazed on the freshly turfed Savile Row.

The good news is that British wool is now starting to become more sought after. Only a few years ago wool from our native sheep had so little value that a whole fleece fetched under one pound at auction, less than the cost of shearing and transport, encouraging farmers just to burn it. The floccinaucinihilipilification of wool has been due in no small part to the creation of synthetic fabrics made from plastics and crude oils. Now at last we are learning that the environmental costs of these cheap clothes is huge, new research shows that even microfibres from synthetics washed at home are entering the food chain, impacting on the welfare of the whole planet.

Wool is a natural renewable resource and the original cloth of the British Isles but our sheep do tend to have thicker fibres compared with fine Merino yarns coming from Australia. This has led to it’s use in carpets, rugs and even loft insulation. However, with cross breeding and ameliorating climate breeds such as the Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale are producing exquisite lustre yarns for suitings and tweeds. A while back we wove a lovely collection with Romney Marsh Wools and soon we will be exploring the use of rare breed sheep for exquisite modern tweed collections. Hopefully soon customers after picking up their morning single estate Guatemalan lattes and Venezuelan Criollo chocolate bars will come in asking for a Jacob Wool jacket and a Clun Forest cap.

If you have any questions or would like to book a Made to Measure appointment to add a dash of British wool to your wardrobe, please visit us on 47 Dorset Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 7ND or drop us an email on: holly@dashingtweeds.co.uk

All the very best,

The Dashing Team

Topshop up their game

As part of their made in Britain luxury design collaborations TopShop certainly know where to turn to up their game. Dashing Tweeds of course, and we are thrilled with this beautiful ladies jacket available in the crimson modernist (as above) and night vibe. Snap them up while stocks last!