Highland Dress by Kinloch Anderson, how a traditional haberdasher says it with plaid.
During our trip to New York City last month to tour the Kips Bay Decorator Show House and attend ICFF, we made a pilgrimage to the mid-town location of Brooks Brothers to stroll through the section of the store dedicated to Kinloch Anderson’s Highland dress and tartans. The experience gave us a much-needed hit of Scottish culture that inspired our Collection Skye, and our first response, of course, was “no one knows how to ‘say it with plaid’ better than the Scots!”
Kinloch Anderson Tartans at Brooks Brothers in midtown Manhattan.
Say It with Plaid
The Kinloch Anderson brand doesn’t take its tagline, “Inspiration from Heritage,” lightly, as the tartans it sells hold meaning stretching back into the mists of time, particularly for generations of families who proudly wore the patterns as badges of honor. We never tire of teasing our CEO, Bruce Andrews Macdonald, that there are dozens of MacDonald tartans in the mix—weaves that range from the MacDonald of the Isles Hunting Modern plaid to the MacDonald Lord of the Isles Ancient Hunting plaid. Fortunately, he takes it in stride so no heads have rolled on his watch!
Pringle of Scotland has ample plaid in their Fall 2016 RTW Collection.
Kinloch Anderson’s haberdashery is traditional as plaid comes so we thought it would be fun to juxtapose their wares with the edgy riffs on plaids that have been hitting the runways during the Fall 2016 Ready-To-Wear reveals the past few months. We would have expected ample examples from one of Scotland’s preeminent fashion houses, Pringle of Scotland, but we noticed plaid has popped up in the most unexpected of brands, including Balenciaga, Gucci and Prada.
Balenciaga Plaid on the runways for the Fall 2016 RTW Collection debuts.
Plaid Gets Trendy
Writing for Vogue, Sarah Mower reports that Balenciaga’s artistic director Demna Gvasalia was nervous about the Balenciaga collection debut, his opening salvo, “How do you persuade a woman to wear a two-piece suit who is not the German Chancellor?” He answered his own quandary by revisiting the archives in order to think through the essence of how Cristóbal Balenciaga would have made new releases relevant for modern women: the result in his mind, as this Wall Street Journal article attests, came down to making clothes that are meant to be worn.
Plaid by Prada and Gucci during Fall 2016 RTW Collection debuts.
T Magazine looks at his impact on the fashion gestalt by intermingling his influence with another newcomer to the highest stratum of fashion royalty—Alessandro Michele, the current creative director of Gucci. Michele’s references for his newest collection were as far flung as Catherine de’ Medici, ‘70s sport, Renaissance biker, and ‘80s Italian and French couture. Prada declares the woman who would be comfortably clad in plaid a vagabond—“a woman who might be out traveling the world, or may be going on a trip somewhere deep within herself, or maybe perhaps making an even deeper pilgrimage into the labyrinth of women’s history.”
The Highland chair, in Collection Skye, in a bonny tweed.
Well, Miuccia Prada, we have a chair that will serve as the perfect launching pad for this journey, be it internal or external, and we’re proud to say this is how Bruce Andrews Design does plaid, mixing it up with leather and sourcing it in a fine wool mohair to give the chair a bit of texture! Even this aspect of our collection has heritage behind it, as we looked to the venerable fabric house Abraham Moon & Sons of Scotland. Have you seen any fabulous examples of this pattern lately that were standouts in your eyes? We’d love to know so be sure to share them with us, okay?
This post, Say It with Plaid, © Bruce Andrews Design, all rights reserved. Our furniture is now available through Nandina Home in Aiken, SC; Jalan Jalan in Miami, FL; Travis & Company in ADAC in Atlanta; and the Ellouise Abbott showroom in Dallas, TX. We will soon be showing in the Ellouise Abbott showroom in Houston and in the Michael-Cleary showroom in Chicago, IL.
