Trending Fabrics In Modern Menswear

For the sartorially-inclined male, fashion is a fickle master that consumes many hours of his life. For some, it’s about the pursuit of the timeless investment piece, for others it’s seeking the new and now.

Fabrics play a pivotal role in how we dress and are often a stronger influence on consumer trends than cut or colour. They can be revived in fresh forms from the dusty depths of the wardrobes of yesteryear, or completely original, novel inventions.

In this piece, we take a look at some of the more traditional materials that are set to influence our personal style in 2014…

1. Tweed

Just thinking of this heritage fabric evokes a whole host of rich connotations: the earthy, musty smell tainted with old tobacco and fresh rain, the hard-wearing woolen texture on the fingers, and images of mustachioed Edwardian gents with Holland & Holland rifles perched on their shoulders.

Quite fittingly, tweed originated from the land of all things hardy: Scotland. Developed in the 18th century as a practical and heavy cloth to tackle the harsh highland elements, tweed weaving spread across the water to Ireland, where its most famous tweed manufacturing region, County Donegal, produces the distinctive multi-tone fleck cloth known as Donegal Tweed.

What began as a workingman’s cloth soon spread to the aristocratic echelons, where it was recognized as the ideal fabric for outdoor pursuits at lavish hunting parties. It was durable, warm and naturally water repellent – the perfect fit.

It’s this association with the British elite that still lingers in the popular consciousness today. Having enjoyed its heyday from the 19th century, up until the 1950s, tweed fell out of favor after being associated with stuffy professors and an antiquated way of life. The fabric enjoyed a revival at the hands of the mods in the 1960s, before once again suffering a decline in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s.