CAMOUFLAGING THE GHILLIES

Roughly speaking, checks are for country, stripes for town.  There are plenty of variations that make exception to this rule but the weight of tradition bears it out, especially with regard to the Estate Tweed checks.

These checks, originally for the great country estates of Scotland and the North of England, continue to be a favoured choice for country jackets and stalking suits. They may be seen as a spin-off from the tartans, often quite similar in design, and, according to some, started by Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert.

When he acquired the Balmoral estate in 1848, Prince Albert decided his stalkers and ghillies should have a new tweed, which he designed himself.  Other estate owners followed suit, both to identify estate workers and for camouflage purposes.

The laird of Strathconon, determined to have his keepers and stalkers blend in with the countryside, took up position with an eyeglass on the porch of his lodge and sent his men up a distant hill carrying different blends of tweed in order to find the cloth that was most suitable. His choice was one of the first ‘camouflage’ cloths.

Rivalling Prince Albert’s design as  being the original estate tweed is the Aberchalder, a distinctive red and black check made for the estate of the same name near Loch Oich.  The Lovat  is a sandy mixture created to blend in with the loch shore, the bracken and the birch trees around Loch Morar. One of the darkest designs is the Carnousie, a true Glenurquhart check with a red overcheck. And the Glenurquhart itself is undoubtedly one of the most successful, a distinctive black and white large check (originally dark blue) that has been used by fashion designers around the world.

Many original designs are protected and should only be used by the estates, but there are plenty of close variations available in tailors’ bunches – or for anyone who would like a tweed designed especially for their estate, The Sutherland Sporting Tweed Company (www.scottishtweeds.co.uk) will design and register a cloth and also make up the clothes.

For those who wish to research further on estate tweeds, a definitive book by E.P.Harrison of top Scottish mill, Johnstons of Elgin, provides a history of the company and the tweeds, the two inextricably linked.

The patterns shown here, all reduced slightly from their original size, are Scottish checks. At the top, is the Invercauld, from an estate next to Royal Balmoral; beneath it, the Atholl, made exclusively for the Duke of Atholl; next, the Lochmore, a variation of the 'gun club' style, well over a century old and from the Sutherland area; and bottom, the Scots Guards check, which belongs to the regiment but has sired a whole school of similarities.
Left, too smart for a ghillie, must be the laird, in a classic check jacket