The Breanish Story

Breanish Tweed is a family weaving business based in the Hebrides of Scotland. We weave lightweight tweeds, Shetland wool, lambswool and cashmere for tailoring. We weave both handwoven and machine-woven tweeds.

I come from the Isle of Lewis, an island famous for weaving. My father Donald was a weaver from when he was young, working on the loom when he was home from working at sea. My mother and sister are designers and we worked with talented hand weavers on the island.

In 2007 we bought the business from the late Ian Sutherland, who started it in 1973. He lived in Breanish, in Uig on Lewis, and he started experimenting with weaving lighter yarns in his Hattersley loom. He had a talent, his patterns are absolutely wonderful. His main customers were Anderson & Sheppard on Savile Row, Oxxford Clothing in Chicago and Vivienne Westwood.

Initially he started weaving Shetland wool, but Critt Rawlins, who had been CEO of Ralph Lauren and was then at Oxxford Clothing, said he would pay him to experiment with weaving cashmere. He had customers who loved his weaving all over the world, in the UK, the US and Europe.

Shortly after taking over the company, I had the chance to go to Tokyo on a trade mission and we wrestle lucky to work with fantastic companies in Japan. We worked with our agents in Japan, the US and Europe and it was really a thrill, seeing what these companies made with cloth we wove.

A lot of customers used our pattern blankets in their creations, here is one from Vivienne Westwood.

One of my favourite things to do was weave bespoke short runs of cloth for customers, so that the were getting a unique tweed. We did this for Mr Kurino of United Arrows.

We have had many wonderful experiences. Ian told me the story that the famous shoe designer Manolo Blahnik had once had a suit made on Savile Row from Breanish. So I thought I would get in touch with them. They couldn't have been friendlier, and we ended up weaving for one of the collections.

A journalist friend of mine told me once, he was in London, in the press pack waiting for President Obama to arrive. The journalist was wearing a suit made by Breanish in a pretty dandy pattern, terracotta with a blue overcheck. As Obama went past him on the steps, he stopped and turned to him. "Nice suit," he said, and walked off.

In 2011 we won the Balvenie Masters of Craft for Textiles.

As well as cloth for tailoring, we also weave scarves, throws and shawls in different qualities.

Life is full of change. Nowadays, we work more on small, individual runs and are moving more to machine-woven. My father can no longer weave. I do miss working with my parents in the business. But it is still exciting to work with our amazing customers and the world of tweed and Menswear is always fascinating.

At the moment I am selling short lengths of handwoven cloth on our Breanish Tweed online shop at a reduced price, to make room for some new patterns and products. If you'd like to hear of more adventures for the world of tweed, you can subscribe to our occasional newsletter. Thanks for reading.