Lifestyle Shopping&Fashion
Life on the thread mill A new exhibition joins the dots between Scotland’s textile past and design future, discovers Anna Burnside
Clockwise from top: Pringle head designer Wallace Shaw in 1973; a still from the film ‘Weave Me A Rainbow'; a drawing by Bob Stewart, who taught in the GSA’s printed textiles dept. Below: a Beca Lipscombe scarf
T he glory days of Scotland’s textile industry, when the Borders whirred with knitting machines and tweed was a viable alternative to central heating, seem a long time ago. Post-globalisation, garments with the ‘Made in Scotland’ label are about as common as baby unicorns.
A new exhibition, The Inventors of Tradition, looks back at these happier times (without allowing the nostalgia to become overpowering). Curators Lucy McEachan and Catriona Duffy, the Glasgow-based design promoters who run Panel, have put together a thought-provoking collage of rarely-seen samples, promotional materials, films and other ephemera from 1930 to the present. And just in case it became too much of a heather-mixed walk down memory lane, they also invited designer Beca Lipscombe and artist Lucy McKenzie, who work together as Atelier, to create a mini-collection as a forward- looking part of the exhibition.
24 THE LIST 20 Jan–3 Feb 2011
‘We wanted to look at the promotion, the processes, remember what a big business textile manufacturing was,’ says McEachan. ‘It’s not a linear survey, it’s subjective and personal.’ To this end, McEachan and Duffy have tracked down retired designers and machine operators and persuaded them to put letters, outfits, home movies and other treasures on show, often for the first time. ‘These are not pieces from museum archives. These are things that were tucked into drawers and stored in attics.’ The venue is equally unconventional: the former Henry Healy’s grocery store at 21 Stockwell Street, Glasgow. This will, they hope, combine the experience of shopping with the viewing of an
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WE SAW YOU Jamie Bruski-Tetsill 29, fashion designer, Glasgow
My haircut was from Cusp in the West End. I just got that today!
The gilet is from Zara, and the jumper underneath was a birthday present from my flatmates. I don’t know where they got it . . .
I bought my trainers online a while back – I can’t remember where from. But I know the belt was from Gap, and the jeans are Levi’s.
exhibition about fashion. ‘It’s an odd space,’ says Duffy, ‘but not out of place.’ It is also, to her delight, a ball of wool’s throw away from Glassford Street, once home to Glasgow’s most exalted dressing-up box, The Warehouse. ‘We really wanted to bring them in because they were instrumental in bringing great design – from Japan, from Belgium – to Glasgow.’
Beca Lipscombe has happy memories of shopping in The Warehouse, which closed in 1994. She and McKenzie, a Saatchi-collected contemporary artist, have produced a collection of work coats, a cashmere suit and headscarves that Duffy describes as ‘playful’. These have been manufactured by what remains of the Scottish textiles
industry.
‘Back in the day, Scotland was creating global brands which made money,’ says Duffy. ‘They used Scotland to sell clothes, the idea of it, the quality of the manufacture. There are not many brands that use quality as their selling point.’
The Inventors of Tradition, Sat 22 Jan–Sat 26 Feb, 21 Stockwell Street, Glasgow.
See wearepanel.co.uk for info.