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Show OUR LONDON STYLE LETTER The romance of Scottish tweeds told by our J style observer abroad BY OUB LONDON STYLE OBSERVER I LONDON, August: I wonder i how many men realize, when they put on a suit made from a superfine material, the amount of art and romance which has gone to the making of the cloth. Weaving is no longer the simple process it used to be. Decoration, pattern and-colour blending, all have to be considered con-sidered ; dyers and finishers work in conjunction with highly advanced ad-vanced chemists. Scotch tweeds carry romance with them. They seem to speak of their environment; to have borrowed from Nature the secret of her wonderful colours. The skill f thfir manufacture, and the thoroughness, almost symbolical sym-bolical of the Scottish character, has earned for the Scottish woolen industry an honourable place in the textile world. From the homespuns of Harris and the Highlands, and the beautifully beau-tifully soft products of the Shetland Shet-land Islands, to the cloths of the Lowland counties, the manufacture manufac-ture of cloth from the fleece of the sheep is carried on throughout through-out the entire country. It is from here that Hart Schaffner & Marx import many of their fine fabrics. The origin of the word "tweed" is disputed: Some say it arose from a clerical error for "twill," and others that it was given to the cloths produced in towns on the river Tweed. Whatever the actual derivation, a more or less peaceable population plied the shuttle on the Tweed at a time .vhen the moss troopers were plundering on the Border. Until early in the nineteenth century the native sheep supplied sup-plied the bulk of the raw material ma-terial and even today more sheep are reared per acre in the counties coun-ties of Roxburgh and Selkirk than anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, the home supply by no means meets the demand of the Scottish manufacturers, who have to buy fine and coarse wool from all wool producing countries. There are endless varieties of Scottish cloths and each one has its particular use in the men's wear world ; the lamb's wool and dark Cheviot coatings for formal wear ; smart silk adorned Cheviot and Saxony suitings for town use; rough tweeds for the country coun-try ; tightly twisted thorn proof cloths for sports and soft loose comfortable Shetlands for golfing. golf-ing. Then there are fine fleecy overcoatings, and wonderfully coloured checkbacks as well as black and dark grey cloths for , town overcoats. |