Staufenberger Tweed

So things are progressing on the Staufenberger Suit.

With its moisture resistance and durability, tweed was always going to be our fabric of choice. But which tweed? We spent hours flicking through endless swatch books...

...debating the merits of Harris vs. Donegal, check or herringbone...oh, the choices.

In the end, there was nothing for it than for us to commission our own tweed. And who better to work with than John G Hardy, who hold a couple of Royal Warrants (apparently, they supply Balmoral tweed to the royal household).

To be honest, we could have picked one the thousands of tweeds already in existence but we wanted ours to reflect cycle culture in some way (even if very subtly). So we set ourselves the task of incorporating the colours of the rainbow jersey into our design.

For the few readers of the Repository who are not bike nuts, the rainbow jersey is the top that the reigning world champion (across the numerous cycle racing disciplines) gets to wear during his/her year at the top of the pile. It looks like this:

So from here the process began.

First, the search to find the yarns that best matched the red, blue, yellow and green of the world champion stripes (we'd already decided the black stripe would be represented by the ground colour).

Once the yarns were selected, a few tests swatches were woven, featuring the colours as flecks:

These we rejected. Not enough colour. Too recessive.

Then we switched to stripes, rather than flecks, for the colours. We ran a few more tests. And then we got it...The Staufenberger Tweed:

We've pushed the button on production and are expecting a delivery of about 60 metres of the stuff in January.

Comments

[David]

Didn't the house of lords used to smell of piss when the tweed of the landed gentry got wet in the rain? Something to do with the colour being fixed with stale urine. Are you sure you've though this bike suit through? It would certainly be a conversation starter at a client meeting.

[Yusuf]

Yep, in certain parts of Scotland tweed used to be boiled in lichens and stale urine. But don't worry we did think it through and managed to source of eBay the virtually odourless Yak urine, unique to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Yak!

[Hebrides]

LOL, I think they have Yak on Harris now! I must check this out.

What a shame you chose not to use Harris Tweed the poor Harris Tweed industry is in dire need of contracts :-(