If you didn't know already Harris Tweed is celebrating the centenary year of the orb!
Alison Macloed of Tiger Textiles and I are co managing the fashion show with the chief executive of the Harris Tweed Authority Lorna Macaulay. We have been planning the event for the past few months now and cant wait to kick start the action on March 12th! The island will embrace the centenary year of the orb and all that is Harris Tweed!
We have a great range of British designers including Vivienne Westwood, Nigel Caborn, Henry Holland and top notch Scottish talent such as Joyce Paton, Iona Crawford and Deryck Walker.The ladies from Obscure Couture who are just back from London Fashion Week will also be producing a one off Harris Tweed outfit for the event in their own unique signature style! Local designers Netty Sopota, Laurie Stewart and Sally Jay Avis who are all natives of the Island are also collaborating in a range for the event.
The show will take place at An Lanntair Arts Centre on March 12th where Fred MacAuly will host an evening to remember; celebrating the centenary year and giving back to a community who have been producing the unique cloth for over one hundred years.
Watch this space and I will update with photographs from the event..exciting times!
In the mean time here are a few photos from my last trip where my tour guide Alison took me to visit Uncle Donald at his loom in Shawbost.
We went in for a cuppa and met their Neighbour.
The Butt of Lewis!
The Islanders and the Orb
I met a man in Harris Tweed
As I walked down the Strand;
I turned and followed him like a dog
The breath of hill and sea and bog
That clung about that coat of brown,
And suddenly, in London Town,
I heard again the Gaelic speech,
The scrunch of keel on shingly beach;
The traffic's never-ending roar
Come plangent from a shining shore;
I saw the little lochs where lie
The lilies, white as ivory;
And tumbling down the rocky hills
Came scores of little foaming rills,
I saw the crofter bait his line,
The children herding yellow kine,
The barefoot woman with her creel,
The washing-pot, the spinning wheel,
The mounds thrown up by patient toil,
To coax the corn from barren soil.
With buoyant step I went along
Whistling a Hebridean song
That Iain Og of Taransay
Sang one enchanted day.
I was a man renewed indeed
Because I smelt that Harris Tweed
As I went down the Strand.
