A Ducal Tweed

I wrote some days ago about a current subscription of the London Lounge Cloth Club and thought readers might enjoy seeing the early twentieth century original and the modern interpretation of the cloth.

In its original form, the tweed worn by the late Duke of Windsor in the unattributed photo was a gift in the then-pattern of one of the Scottish estates. The Duke wore the suit made from it for several decades and though any color photographs seem to be lost the pattern was described several times in letters and articles from the period.


Michael Alden of the London Lounge took the descriptions of the cloth and worked with what I think of as the best tweed mill remaining in Scotland to produce the sample pattern in the photograph. It weighs 14/15 ounces (420-450 grams) and combines green, brown and light blue checks on a tan ground, which will make a country suit that is distinctive without frightening the birds.

Tweed mills are generally set up for short runs of cloth, as much of their business historically came from Scottish estates who were clothing the owners and their staff. Where worsted mills have minimums of hundreds of meters of cloth, tweed mills ask for as little as 40 meters. That makes bespoke runs practical when a small group of men can agree on a common objective.

Kudos to Mr. Alden for helping keep these traditions alive.

Tweed photo: Michael Alden