Introduction: Origin Point 

“From the land comes the cloth,” or so goes the adage. It has been years since ancient waulking folk songs were heard sung across the Hebrides Islands and the Scottish Highlands, but that does not mean the region’s ancient custom of textile making does not still run deep (Fig. 1).1 The oldest surviving tartan textile fragment from the Highland region, the Glen Affric Tartan, can be dated to circa 1500-1600 CE, and the oldest woven tweed fragments from the 2nd and 3rd century CE.2, 3 To this day, Hebridean highlanders still produce An Clo Mòr, or “ the big cloth.”4 Such communitarian and collective ways of life, grounded in respect for the earth we inhabit and the animals we live alongside, work to actively combat the increasingly pervasive social isolation and alienation induced by the technological revolution of the 21st century.  

The Harris Tweed Authority, created through a 1993 act of British parliament, maintains that all Harris tweeds be “handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.”5 Protected by law, Hebridian tweeds maintain their status as the gold standard. Harris tweeds are forever associated with the Highlands; their point of origin never forgotten.6 In addition though, and perhaps most importantly, these protections grant the stability necessary to preserve the community’s ancestral knowledge of collective ways of making; customs that have been passed down through the textile’s centuries-long history.

Abstract

This essay will traverse the history, process of making, and traditions (both manufactured and customary) around tartan in the Scottish Highlands and the greater United Kingdom. I have focused specifically on how the fabric has been utilized as a fluid signifier throughout its history in the modern and contemporary period, primarily in the 18th to 20th centuries. Tartan has long been associated with Highland ethnic identity, exemplified through its role as a rallying device during the Jacobin Rising of 1745. The ensuing Act of Proscription of 1746, which banned male Highlanders from wearing tartan textiles and other elements of customary dress, pointed to a British recognition of the power of the tartan symbol.  When movements of mass industrialization reoriented and displaced communities across the 18 and 19th centuries, tartan was congruously Balmoralized by the contemporaneous Romantic movement in an attempt to connect back to the land, celebrate a sanitized vision of the ‘wildness’ of Highlander cultures, and secure a collective relationship to their ancestry. At the same time, the British aristocracy weaponized tartan as a signifier of tradition and hierarchy, creating the Highlands as a collective point of mythic origin for a pan-British national identity. In essence, the 18th to 20th centuries saw a push to cultivate a modern traditional history for tartan as an abstracted signifier of traditional aristocratic Britishness, while also simultaneously being able to signify an individualized sense of inner edge or wildness. With this history established,  I will look at the collection “Harris Tweed” by Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022), whose design work centered on themes of rebellion, sexuality, gender role and presentation, historical dressing, and British national identity. I will think about the ways in which she utilizes tartan and tweeds, in order to comment on the tumultuous social conditions of 1970s-90s Great Britain, and the constructed artifice of British upper class hierarchies. 

Section 1: Jacobites, Tartans, and the Act of Proscription

Tartan began its modern tenure as a politicized identitarian symbol when it began to signify a distinct pan-Scottish lineage during the ill-fated Jacobin Rising of 1745, a movement to reclaim the British throne for Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788)7. After “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” as he was affectionately known,  wore a variation of the féile-breacan (origin c.17th century CE), or the small kilt, to lead his rebel army, the textile became an effective propagandistic tool for the Jacobites to rally the highland clans (Fig. 2).8 

Though the kilt was the official uniform of the British Army's Highland Brigade, the Jacobite rebel army reappropriated the uniform in following with the custom that Highland men wear tartans into battle. The foregrounding of tartan was essential in constructing the legitimacy of the Jacobin cause, as it was crucial that Charles Edward Stuart, who was born in Rome to the banished descendants of the exiled Stuart King James II and VII, be identified directly with the specific Gaelic and Pict heritage and community customs of the Highlands.

Scottish upper classes sympathetic to the Jacobite cause commissioned the fashionable English and French militaria-inspired tailored styles of the time in vibrant tartan textiles, as captured in this portrait of a Jacobite woman (Fig.3).9

The sitter is also pictured holding a white rose; another symbol of the revolution.10 Where tartan had always been associated with the Highlands, some Lowlanders also began to adopt tartans into their dressing to signify their revolutionary leanings. Though the Jacobites were defeated in 1746 at the Battle of Culloden (Fig. 4), the association across the British isles- particularly in England- between tartan, the military aggression of the clans, and a steely spirit of rebellion grew and took hold. 

In the wake of the Rising, the Act of Proscription was passed in England in 1746.11 The new law demilitarized the Highland clans, disempowered the clan chieftains,  and banned Scottish men (outside of the Highland regiments of the British army) from wearing tartan textiles and any other elements of Highland customary dress.12 This action pointed to a British recognition of tartan textile  as a powerful rallying point, with tangible political influence. The Proscription spanned thirty-six years until its repeal in 1782, and did the work of defanging tartan as a potent symbol of the collective power of a united, militarized Scotland. 

Perhaps most consequentially, in banning tartans, the act also dismantled the small-scale production of tartan tweeds in the Highlands; nearly snuffing out centuries of ancestral knowledge around tweed textile creation. This unfolded as concurrent rapid evolutions in industrial fabric production made tartan patterns exceptionally easy to produce across a wide array of textiles. Mills and factories across Britain, including Scotland, reoriented and displaced working communities and their customary ways of life, prompting a mass exodus from rural areas to new industrial cities in order to produce these new and complicated tartan fabrics.13 Under these new conditions, Highlanders were working in factories to create yards of textile that they themselves could not wear by law. By the end of the 18th century, when the Act of Proscription was finally lifted,  the remotely located Hebridean islanders were keeping alive some of the only small-scale collective weaving practices left in the region. 

 As industrialization continued to disorient ways of rural life across the United Kingdom, the burgeoning philosophical, artistic, and literary movement of Romanticism rose in popularity amongst the British intellectual class, acting in response to collective feelings of unmooredness amidst the social turmoil of the early-to-mid 19th century.14 The Romantics were devoted to “reconnecting” with the agrarian and collectivized structures of what were now largely disbanded rural population across Britain. It should be noted that in their idealism, Romantics ignored the oppressive reality of medieval feudal class structures, expectations of intensive manual labor, and the natural shifts in custom that shaped these communities over time. It is dubious that the movement leaders, many of whom were born into the upper classes and aristocracy, would have been descended from the peasants of the English feudal state system or members of Highland clans.15

The Invention of Tradition, authored by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, provides an essential definition of the “invented tradition,” or a tradition that is distinctly formed in modern periods through purposefully reanimating cultural vestiges of or from the past, in order to cultivate a grounding, yet all-the-while fabricated, sense of cultural longstandingness. In propagating a litany of such traditions, the Romantic period is the true inception point for many of the contemporary cultural trappings of the British aristocracy, and the associated catalog of self-mythologies.16

One of the most outstanding examples of invented tradition is the modern belief that tartans are each associated with a different clan, dating back to prehistory. In reality, this tradition can be directly traced back to the late 18th century. William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn, founded in 1765 in the midst of the Highland tartan ban, was one of the most notable and prolific manufacturing mills for tartans.17 The firm produced a variety of new and complex tartans, which would become falsely identified as associated with a complex clan classification system. Wilson & Sons did offer the opportunity for clients to design and produce their own tartan setts, a large number of which went on to be classified as ‘clan’ tartans. In reality, the Highland clans did not historically have officially associated tartans, and variations in clan textile customs are understood to have arisen from regional differences in dye availability and associated patterning preferences.18 

This association between tartan and Romantic nostalgia concretely began from the work of historian and lawyer Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).19 Scott, who hailed from the Scottish Lowlands, was the author behind the popular Waverley series, which includes novels like Ivanhoe (1819) and Rob Roy (1818), and presented a view of Highland history and contemporary culture clouded by a rose-colored film; distinctly appealing to an English audience.The series began with the 1814 Waverley, or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since, in which Scott recounts a fuzzy, sanitized view of the Jacobite Rising from the perspective of a compassionate English protagonist.20 A far cry from an accurate retelling of the brutal and violent reality of the uprising, Scott paternalistically dismisses the Jacobite cause as honorable, yet ultimately fated to fail in grand romantic fashion. Scott also conveniently omitted the extensive measures taken by the British government to demilitarize and politically disempower the Highland clans in the wake of the uprising. Where the sight of tartan kilts on armed soldiers below the Highlands would once trigger imminent fear of violence, it now prompted feelings of wonder and enchantment. 

In line with the hierarchical, supremacist colonial frameworks that governed the British Empire’s relationship to indigeneity, Highlanders became categorized as existing in the past; idealized as mythic, primitive peoples who served as noble examples of heroism.21 There was an understanding of the Highlander as a sort of proto Brit, wild and rebellious (within reason). They were seen to be connected to their land, and thus secure in their relationship to their ancestry– in contrast to the post-industrial, uprooted lives led by the majority of the United Kingdom. Thus, crucially, an English Romantic’s decision to wear tartan could signify towards a desire to signify an individualized sense of inner wildness, and a personal rebellion against the conditions of a British modernity driven by violent empire and hyper capitalism. Such an association was picked up in the 20th century, with youth movements like Punk Rock and the New Romantics of the 1970s and 1980s.

At the same time,  tartan textiles were weaponized as a way to naturalize entrenched hierarchies and power structures. When the English became infatuated with the disempowered  clan structure and associated aesthetics of the Highlands, it prompted a swell in popularity for tartan textiles, Scottish histories, and interest in Highland customs known as Balmoralization.22 First among the avid followers of this new culture of mythos around the Highlands were the Royal Family, who were themselves of nearly entire German and Austro-Hungarian ancestry.23 In 1822, King George IV (1762-1830) made the first official royal visit to Scotland in over 150 years.24 The King traveled with Sir Walter Scott, who commissioned the design of the Royal Stewart tartan for the King, and invited him to wear the traditional Highland dress to pose for a –notably generous-- portrait in 1822 (Fig. 6).

Known at the time as Princess Victoria of Kent, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was herself  deeply invested in Scott’s writing about the Highlands. This early interest is exemplified in a tartan dress worn by the future queen in her teenage years, fashioned from a mass-produced silk textile woven into an elaborate tartan (Fig. 7).25 

   After ascending the throne, Victoria gave the movement of Balmoralization its name when she purchased and remodeled the Highland-based Balmoral Castle in 1852. The exterior of the structure was constructed in the contemporary Scottish Baronial style, which was a regionally inspired iteration of the popular neo-gothic romantic architectural styles of the period. In addition to the registering of Prince Albert’s (1819-1861) c. 1853 design of a new Balmoral ‘clan’ tartan, the Balmoral interiors were covered with tartan textiles, from the rugs to the wallpapers.26 When these efforts are considered alongside the Baronial stylings of Balmoral’s architecture, there is clear intention present in building a brand-new castle to appear as if it has existed through the centuries. Balmoral is itself an invented tradition, which endeavors to cultivate grounds for historicized mythmaking around a British origin point for royals with no true ancestral connections to any land of the United Kingdom. The castle became, in essence, a wild and misty home for the Royals to return to; a materialized Highland Camelot.27  

The falsity of this association is revealed in how the tartan textiles themselves are forced to adapt into the stiff tailoring of English and French suiting. When tartan tweeds are worn in the ways they originated in the Highlands, such as the men's fèileadh-mòr (origin c. 16th-18th century CE) and féile-breacan (origin c. 17th century CE), or the women's earasaid (origin c.17th to 18th centuries CE), the loose drape and pleating of the tartan tweed created a silhouette full of movement and dynamism; the textile itself taking on an agentic role.28 Luxury is found in the fabric itself, in the quality of weaving, the value of the dyes used, and number of colors that make up the tartan sett.29 When tailored into stiff suiting, however, the textile is forced to bend to the will of the garment. This does the work of neutralizing the tartan, controlling the textile into structured, stuffy coats, waistcoats, and trousers.30 The tailoring of tartan thus does the same work as Sir Walter Scott's novels; relegating the meaning of the textile to a faint and distant past, deemphasizing the textile’s connection to the land from whence it came, anglicizing and domesticating it. 

Section 4: Vivienne Westwood, Harris Tweed Tartans, and Subversions of Tailoring 

       Tartans, particularly tartan tweeds, maintain this ability to signal towards both its associated invented traditions and its mythic rebellious ethos well into the 20th century. In the 1920s, a decade defined by the breaking down of hierarchical gendered dressing, tartans once again surged in popularity across the West, this time primarily in the silk and cotton textiles that made the revolutionarily flimsy and short-skirted flapper dresses. Mere decades later in the 1950s, which had returned to the strict reinforcement of hierarchical gender roles, tartan tweeds were popular textiles for constrictive pencil skirts, long pleated skirts, and conservative structured evening wear. Finally, in the 70s and 80s, the pattern was adopted en masse by the Punk Rock and New Romantic subcultures, whose do-it-yourself (D.I.Y) clothing silhouettes and aesthetics were founded explicitly on an anti-establishment, anti-capitalist ethos.31 

The catalog of Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022), a prominent fashion designer of the later 20th century, speaks to this spectrum of oscillating meaning in her Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear collection, “Harris Tweed”. Westwood, who was raised in the conservative English middle class of the 1940s and 50s, emerged as an artistic voice from the punk movement of the 1970s. Her oeuvre is deeply invested in referencing the historical uses of tartan in the 18th and 19th centuries; using the pattern to explore themes of rebellion and social hierarchies in the context of national identity.

In “Harris Tweed”, Westwood points to the artifice of traditional dressing in the English aristocracy through her use of these tweeds. The collection, which was occasionally referred to by Westwood as her “royal” or “aristocratic” collection,32 was named for the category of tweeds produced specifically under the regulations set by the Harris Tweed Authority. To date, Westwood had used only Harris Tweed tartans in her collections; first used for her punk “bondage trousers” (Fig 10).33 Setting the scene for the show, Westwood took the quintessential Harris Tweed logo and blew it up to a massive scale in order to use it as the show backdrop. In doing so, she is taking the maker’s label that would normally be hidden inside the clothing, and making it hyper visible. Here, she is recognizing the labor of the workers, the specific ancient history of Highland tweeds, and the associated collective practice of making.

The styles of many of the clothes were based on images of the pre-teen Princesses Elizabeth (1926-2022) and Margaret (1930-2002) in the 1930s; neat a-line coats and jackets (Fig. 11), all in Harris tweed, sometimes audaciously mixed with ‘low brow’ recycled denim textiles, stretch satins, and sequins.34 Haphazard and mismatched styling exists in combination with allusions to costume and fancy dress, particularly exemplified in a garment where  gaudy gold sequins instead of cloth of gold creates an intentionally cheap replication of a ball gown (Fig. 12).35 There are also plush fabric crowns made from Harris Tweed, ceremonial sashes made of garter belts, and shrunken ermine capes made of fake furs and felt (Fig.12, 13); all material choices that point towards the artifice behind these ceremonial garments and symbols; indicating that the entire thing is a construction and a farce.

 The conservative style of the Royal Family, and English upper classes in general, were reflected in twinsets, and shown by Westwood in reserved colors like heather grey, taupe, and red. The twinsets are paired with pearls and knit turtlenecks, white nylons, and miniature riding hats (Fig. 14), and tow a blurred line between childlike and matronly, speaking to the closed aristocratic generational lineages that pass down inherited institutional power.36  This theme continues in the styling, which combines the ultra-tailored, stiff skirt suits with hair that is becoming undone, and smudged lipstick that is faded at the edges (somewhat suggestively, at that). The hair is styled in stiff rollers, referencing both the Queen and the generalized social stiffness of the British upper classes, but is progressively more mussed as the show goes on; pointing again to how easily the veneer slips (Fig. 14, 15).37 

Westwood’s introduction of corsets, which make underwear outerwear, also do the work of deconstructing facade, and exposing the boned structure beneath a refined exterior (Fig. 16).38 Finally, and most cleverly, even the shoes make a cheeky point. The platform heels, which are the first introduction of Westwood’s “Rocking Horse” pumps, are designed with a nick cut in the back of the heel, so as to cause the wearer rocks back and forth unsteadily; cultivating a wobbly foundation for the garments.

Conclusion 

From the drafty and damp hallways of Balmoral Castle to the streets of contemporary London, the symbolic weight and tradition of tartan textiles are carried wherever they are worn. In our current period of transformative socio-technological change, it can be argued that we have entered a new and rapidly moving period of industrial revolution; the conditions of our world mirroring in many ways the societal displacement and cultural dissociation of the United Kingdom in the 18-19th centuries. Concurrently, we have also entered another period of conservatism and Romanticism, with people across the globe once again longing to invent and build upon traditions, looking nostalgically to the past as an idealized utopia. However, just like the falsified Romantic narrative of a noble and mythologized Scotland fighting for freedom against the reality of violence and turmoil in the Highlands during the Jacobin Rising, the past is never so simple or idyllic. This said, it is not altogether wrong to assert that there are things to be learned from the Hibridian cultures and their relationships to labor and the land, in both their past and contemporary iterations. When we emphasize that “from the land comes the cloth,”  we go beyond the dematerialized, capitalist semiotic symbologies of the garments we wear and instead connect to the material histories, working people’s labor, and land that they come from. Communitarian and collective ways of life, grounded in respect for the earth we inhabit and the animals we live alongside, may yet still actively combat the increasingly pervasive social isolation and alienation we experience in the 21st century.  The prevailing beauty, quality, and endurance of Harris Tweed tartans continue forward as material evidence of the true capabilities of the empowered worker, the symbiotic collective, and ancestral knowledge.

Works Cited 

Faiers, Jonathan, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Tartan. English edition. Oxford ; Berg, 2008.

Stewart, Donald C. (Donald Calder). The Setts of the Scottish Tartans : With Descriptive and Historical Notes. 2nd rev. ed. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd., 1974.

Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. 1st ed. Vol. 15. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107295636.

Dziennik, Matthew P. “WHIG TARTAN: MATERIAL CULTURE AND ITS USE IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, 1746—1815.” Past & Present, no. 217 (2012): 117–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23324205.

Fury, Alexander, Vivienne Westwood, and Andreas Kronthaler. Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

Banks, Jeffrey, and Doria De la Chapelle. Tartan : Romancing the Plaid. New York: Rizzoli, 2007.

Lawson, Ian. From the Land Comes Cloth. Selvedge (London), 2014.

“Scotland’s Oldest Tartan Discovered by Scottish Tartans Authority.” Scotland’s oldest tartan discovered by Scottish Tartans Authority, March 26, 2023. https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/info/scotland-s-oldest-tartan-discovered-by-scottish-tartans-authority?srsltid=AfmBOooAHsj0j641nen7ak_FkA0GsmcUJ0Ba3ArcmGa6Rw-gT7qKbe0D. 

The Big Cloth. Vimeo, 2019. https://vimeo.com/366216556?share=copy. 

MacDonald, Peter Eslea. “The Balmoral Tartan.” Scottish Tartans Registry, 2017. https://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/Balmoral_Tartan.pdf. 

Barks, Brenna A. “Sir Walter Scott and the Tartan Craze.” PieceWork, September 4, 2023. https://pieceworkmagazine.com/walter-scott-tartan-craze/. 

CROWFOOT, GRACE  M. “TWO  TEXTILES  FROM  THE  NATIONAL  MUSEUM,  EDINBURGH.” Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Vol. 82 (1950). 

Waulking Skye Weavers Tweed. Youtube, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8HKJ94v2xM. 

The National Archives. “Laws to Control Scotland.” The National Archives, June 2, 2014. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/jacobite-1745/laws-control-scotland/. 

“Early Kilt.” The Scottish Tartans Museum and Heritage Center, Inc., April 28, 2023. https://scottishtartansmuseum.org/education/early-kilt/. 

Cameron, Ewen A. “The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil.” Scottish Historical Review. Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

Scott, Walter. Waverley. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1814. 

Castelow, Ellen. “The Highland Clans of Scotland.” Historic UK, May 7, 2024. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Highland-Clans/#:~:text=The%20clan%20system%20was%20already,battle%20of%20Culloden%20in%201746. 

“Queen Victoria and the German Language.” Goethe Institute. Accessed May 9, 2025. https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/kul/ser/past/vll/21618144.html. 

Figure Glossary 

 Fig.1: Still from The British Council, “Women of The Outer Hebrides - Waulking Song (1941),” posted 2021 by  Folk Survival, Youtube, 1:08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_AhEvaKlw

 Fig. 2:  Mosman, William, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 1720 - 1788, Eldest son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, Oil on canvas, c. 1737 - 1750,  Scottish National Portrait Gallery, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3866/prince-charles-edward-stuart-1720-1788-eldest-son-prince-james-francis-edward-stuart 

 Fig. 3: attributed Alexander, Cosmo, Portrait of a Jacobite Lady (maybe Jenny Carlson, alleged mistress to Bonnie Prince Charlie), Oil on canvas, c. 1736, National Trust of Scotland, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/portrait-of-a-jacobite-lady-196301

  Fig. 4: Attributed to Morier, David,  An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745, Oil on canvas, c. 1753, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/401243/an-incident-in-the-rebellion-of-1745 

 Fig. 5: Landseer, Sir Edward, Queen Victoria at Loch Laggan, Oil on panel, 1847, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/403119/queen-victoria-at-loch-laggan

 Fig. 6: Wilkie, Sir David, George IV in Highland Dress, oil on canvas, 1829, Royal 

Collection,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_IV_in_kilt,_by_Wilkie.jpg

 Fig. 7: Tartan dress (Worn by Princess Victoria of Kent, later Queen Victoria), Silk velvet, c. 1835-37, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/71984?utm_campaign=col&utm_content=Col,PHH&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5SsJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHt2AfrbgH4VWuRrHpxByjqvBHC1mEj55npEVQANCnMOp5ZT_m3njn9dpNhtn_aem_PBzoC8bxm5TcbzdcqId61g

 Fig. 8:  Roberts, James,  Balmoral Castle: the Queen's Bedroom,Watercolour, 1857, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/919478/balmoral-castle-the-queens-bedroom

 Fig. 9 : Anonymous, French, 19th century, L'Elégant, from "Journal des Tailleurs", Hand-colored lithograph, 1848, Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/399213

 Fig. 10: Photographer unknown,  Vivienne Westwood wearing her design “Bondage Trousers” outside her shop Seditionaries in Camden Yard, 1978. Fury, Alexander, Vivienne Westwood, and Andreas Kronthaler. “Seditionaries” Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

 Fig.11: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

 Fig.12: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

Fig.14: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

Fig.15: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

Fig.16: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

1. “Waulking is a traditional Scottish process of finishing woven wool cloth, involving shrinking and thickening the fabric.” Waulking Skye Weavers Tweed (Youtube, 2024), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8HKJ94v2xM.

2. “Scotland’s Oldest Tartan Discovered by Scottish Tartans Authority,” Scotland’s oldest tartan discovered by Scottish Tartans Authority, March 26, 2023, https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/info/scotland-s-oldest-tartan-discovered-by-scottish-tartans-authority?srsltid=AfmBOooAHsj0j641nen7ak_FkA0GsmcUJ0Ba3ArcmGa6Rw-gT7qKbe0D.

3. GRACE  M CROWFOOT, “TWO  TEXTILES  FROM  THE  NATIONAL  MUSEUM,  EDINBURGH,” Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Vol. 82 (1950).

4. The Big Cloth. Vimeo, 2019. https://vimeo.com/366216556?share=copy. 

5.  Harris Tweed Act, 1993, Chapter xi, United Kingdom 

6. Fig.1: Still from The British Council, “Women of The Outer Hebrides - Waulking Song (1941),” posted 2021 by  Folk Survival, Youtube, 1:08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_AhEvaKlw

7. Fig. 2:  Mosman, William, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 1720 - 1788, Eldest son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, Oil on canvas, c. 1737 - 1750,  Scottish National Portrait Gallery, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3866/prince-charles-edward-stuart-1720-1788-eldest-son-prince-james-francis-edward-stuart 

8. Dziennik, Matthew P. “WHIG TARTAN: MATERIAL CULTURE AND ITS USE IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, 1746—1815.” Past & Present, no. 217 (2012): 117–47. 

9. Fig. 3: attributed Alexander, Cosmo, Portrait of a Jacobite Lady (maybe Jenny Carlson, alleged mistress to Bonnie Prince Charlie), Oil on canvas, c. 1736, National Trust of Scotland, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/portrait-of-a-jacobite-lady-196301

10.  Faiers, Jonathan, and Victoria and Albert Museum. Tartan. English edition. Oxford ; Berg, 2008.

11. Fig. 4: Attributed to Morier, David,  An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745, Oil on canvas, c. 1753, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/401243/an-incident-in-the-rebellion-of-1745 

12. The National Archives, “Laws to Control Scotland,” The National Archives, June 2, 2014, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/jacobite-1745/laws-control-scotland/.

13. Cameron, Ewen A. “The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil.” Scottish Historical Review. Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

14. Banks, Jeffrey, and Doria De la Chapelle. Tartan : Romancing the Plaid. New York: Rizzoli, 2007.

15. Fig. 5: Landseer, Sir Edward, Queen Victoria at Loch Laggan, Oil on panel, 1847, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/403119/queen-victoria-at-loch-laggan

16. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. 1st ed. Vol. 15. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107295636 (p.15-17) p.17-24

17. Mills, N. J., and A. L. Carswell. “WILSON OF BANNOCKBURN AND THE CLOTHING OF THE HIGHLAND REGIMENTS.” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 76, no. 307 (1998): 177–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44230132.

18.  Stewart, Donald C. (Donald Calder). The Setts of the Scottish Tartans : With Descriptive and Historical Notes. 2nd rev. ed. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd., 1974 p.12-14

19.  Brenna A. Barks, “Sir Walter Scott and the Tartan Craze,” PieceWork, September 4, 2023, https://pieceworkmagazine.com/walter-scott-tartan-craze/

20.  Sir Walter Scott, Waverley (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1814)

21.  Faiers, Jonathan, and Victoria and Albert Museum. “Balmoralization”, Tartan. English edition. Oxford ; Berg, 2008. p. 103-104

22. Balmoralization: “process of romanticizing and idealizing Scottish culture and traditions”, Ellen Castelow, “The Highland Clans of Scotland,” Historic UK, May 7, 2024, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Highland-Clans/#:~:text=The%20clan%20system%20was%20already,battle%20of%20Culloden%20in%201746.

23. “Queen Victoria and the German Language,” Goethe Institute, accessed May 16, 2025, https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/kul/ser/past/vll/21618144.html.

24. Fig. 6: Wilkie, Sir David, George IV in Highland Dress, oil on canvas, 1829, Royal Collection,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_IV_in_kilt,_by_Wilkie.jpg

25. Fig. 7: Tartan dress (Worn by Princess Victoria of Kent, later Queen Victoria), Silk velvet, c. 1835-37, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/71984?utm_campaign=col&utm_content=Col,PHH&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5SsJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHt2AfrbgH4VWuRrHpxByjqvBHC1mEj55npEVQANCnMOp5ZT_m3njn9dpNhtn_aem_PBzoC8bxm5TcbzdcqId61g

26. Peter Eslea MacDonald, “The Balmoral Tartan,” Scottish Tartans Registry, 2017, https://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/Balmoral_Tartan.pdf.

27. Fig. 8:  Roberts, James,  Balmoral Castle: the Queen's Bedroom,Watercolour, 1857, Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/919478/balmoral-castle-the-queens-bedroom

28. “Early Kilt.” The Scottish Tartans Museum and Heritage Center, Inc., April 28, 2023. https://scottishtartansmuseum.org/education/early-kilt/.  

29.  From the Oxford Dictionary: the particular pattern of stripes in a tartan. 

30. Fig. 9 : Anonymous, French, 19th century, L'Elégant, from "Journal des Tailleurs", Hand-colored lithograph, 1848, Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/399213

31. Faiers, Jonathan, and Victoria and Albert Museum. “Tartan Timeline” Tartan. English edition. Oxford ; Berg, 2008. p.32-34

32. Fury, Alexander, Vivienne Westwood, and Andreas Kronthaler. “Harris Tweed”, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

33. Fig. 10: Photographer unknown,  Vivienne Westwood wearing her design “Bondage Trousers” outside her shop Seditionaries in Camden Yard, 1978. Fury, Alexander, Vivienne Westwood, and Andreas Kronthaler. “Seditionaries” Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

34. Fig.11: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

35. Fig.12: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

36. Fig.14: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

37. Fig.15: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021

38. Fig.16: Vivienne Westwood, Autumn/Winter 1987-1988 Ready to Wear: Harris Tweed, Vivienne Westwood : The Complete Collections.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021