Team Travels. Back to the Harris Tweed Mill.

We recently found ourselves back in the beautiful part of the world known as the Outer Hebrides. Home to the islands of Harris and Lewis, where not only are the beaches beautiful, the mountains craggy and the whisky strong, it is also famous for being the only place in the world you can make certified Harris Tweed.

Born out of a necessity for hard-wearing, warm clothing, Harris Tweed is still created to this day by hand-weaving sheep’s wool on manually powered looms—it is dyed, dried, blended and spun in the mills, then sent out to skilled islanders, who weave it into the fabric at their at-home looms.

Woven in Lewis (not Harris!) and now worn by people all over the world. Like Stefano and Renato from Bottiglieria (pictured left), a stockist of ours based in Rome, Italy, who love the fabric so much that we are creating a special Harris Tweed piece for them later this year.

There is something to be said for seeing up close how something is crafted, and we have been lucky enough to visit the mill before. Knowing how fascinating it is, we thought it would be the perfect introduction to the creation of our limited piece to bring Stefano and Renato along on our visit.

We took them on a tour of the mill, alongside a few necessary culture stops of Harris (i.e., to sample the aforementioned whiskey...) to see for themselves the process that goes into creating this fabric, and the people that make it possible.