Created from scratch | A closer look at our tweed

How did tweed get its name?

Weaving itself is almost as old as civilisation. The Egyptians were doing something recognisably similar thousands of years ago. But the story of this particular cloth starts more locally, in the hills around the Scottish Borders, where Cheviot sheep have grazed for centuries and their crisp wool has been woven into cloth for just as long.

Tweed's name came by accident. For a long time before anyone knew it as 'tweed', this region produced a two-ply woollen cloth, woven in a 'twill'. In Scotland, 'twill' was pronounced 'tweel', and so bales of it became known as 'tweels'.

In 1826, another consignment of these 'tweels' was sent south to a cloth merchant in London. By then, well-heeled Londoners had discovered the Scottish Borders as a destination in their own right, arriving by stagecoach to hunt, shoot and fish along the river that ran through it: the Tweed.

When the merchant went to reorder, the word on the label – 'tweel', in looping copperplate handwriting – was misread. 'Tweed', the merchant wrote back, thinking of the river he knew. William Watson & Sons of Hawick, who'd made the original bale, thought it was rather a good name for their cloth. It stuck, and has belonged to the fabric ever since.

How is tweed made?

Ask anyone at Lovat Mill to explain how tweed is made, and they'll tell you the process breaks down into stages easily enough. Trying to explain those stages to the layman, however, is another matter.

It starts, as it always has, with wool – a natural, sustainable fibre, often sourced from Cheviot sheep – a breed synonymous with the Scottish Borders.

Choosing that pattern is its own discipline. Yarns are selected not only for colour but for grist – their thickness – which determines the eventual weight of the cloth. Many are twisted together, two or three strands at once, both to adjust that weight and to build in performance; the particular twist behind Schöffel's own cloth is a recipe unique to us.

Once the design is set, yarns are built onto the warp mill – the vertical threads that will carry the pattern – which are then drawn through shafts to keep them moving in the right order once they reach the loom. Weaving itself is the moment the weft yarn is passed horizontally through that warp, locking pattern and colour into place.

What comes off the loom isn't finished, though. Because it's a natural fibre, every length of cloth carries small imperfections, breaks and knots – and every single inch is checked and mended by hand before it goes anywhere near a garment. Finishing follows: washing, and a series of processes that give the cloth its final handle and performance. Some of that finishing is genuinely transformative: plenty of Schöffel fabrics are machine washable, which for a wool tweed takes real innovation to achieve.

Built from scratch, just for us

Lovat Mill likes to describe itself as a craft trying to be an industry. Weave with a natural fibre and you'll never fully industrialise it – nor would you particularly want to. Technology helps at the edges, but at nearly every stage, it still takes a person who understands the material to get it right.

And that is what makes Schöffel Country's tweed different. It isn't only where it comes from, but how it comes to exist in the first place, and the people who bring the whole process to life.

Rather than choosing from an existing pattern book, every Schöffel tweed starts as close to a blank page as cloth gets. Guided by Lovat Mill's own team – James, Alan, Stephen and Ruth among them – the Schöffel product team chooses everything: the colour, the weave, the pattern, the check, the weight, the finish. Nothing is off the shelf. Whether it’s for our women’s tweed jackets and blazers, our men’s tweed sport jackets  or tweed accessories like our tweed hats and caps, everything is made from scratch.

Initially it can feel faintly overwhelming. On a first visit to the mill, it's hard not to be struck by just how complex tweed-making really is, and by how vast the range of possible outcomes can be. There are countless patterns, countless checks, countless ways for a handful of colours to combine into something entirely new. Lovat Mill's team excel in guiding customers through exactly that: narrowing an almost endless canvas of possibility down into one cloth.

The process itself is collaborative and, by all accounts, genuinely enjoyable. We start by gathering around a table with the mill's designers, discussing and debating different options, gradually settling on a direction for the base colour, itself a blend of several fibre shades, before introducing an overcheck on top. Samples are hand-spun downstairs and brought back up for review; a colour gets toned down here, brought up there, the mixture refined again and again, until it's right. The reward, when it comes, is a length of cloth that exists nowhere else in the world.

What are tweed’s defining features?

It's a question that is surprisingly hard to answer in one line, because tweed resists it. Its defining feature might be exactly that resistance: the fact that it has so many defining features at once.

The trick is right there in the yarn: what looks like plain tan or brown fragments, up close, into seven or eight separate threads doing the work of one. It also happens to be a genuinely practical cloth, warm without being heavy, tough without feeling stiff, which is presumably why it turns up equally on the hill, at the races and in the pub afterwards without looking out of place.

It's worth remembering, too, what tweed isn't. Where a tartan repeats the same sequence of colour in both warp and weft – a pattern built for a family, a clan, a name – tweed lets the two run differently, opening up far more room for colour and complexity, and the need for balance. Tartan, as they say at Lovat Mill, belongs to the family. Tweed belongs to the land.

Two hundred years after a misread word gave this cloth its name, the process itself has barely changed. What does change, for Schöffel Country at least, is that a new tweed still gets designed from nothing most seasons – a different base colour, a different overcheck, worked out at the same table, with the same mill, and the same people – people who are proud to carry a legacy and a tradition that truly is timeless.