In a previous post seven years ago we looked at the history of the Paisley pattern via the collection of the Paisley Museum, in Scotland. The pattern often reappears on the fashion runways, but a recent collaboration with a French maison hopes to relaunch it, while contributing to the regeneration of the Scottish town.
At the beginning of March, French fashion house Hermès launched indeed a collaboration entitled "Paisley from Paisley", a sort of capsule for its S/S 19 silk and accessories collections. The collaboration was inspired by a visit that the Hermès team took to Paisley: here they selected some designs from the museum archive and adapted them for scarves, enamel pendants and bracelets.
Though the pattern is named after the eponymous town in Scotland, it didn't originate there. The teardrop-shaped motif signifying fertility, reproduction and abundance can indeed be traced back to the ancient Babylonian civilisation where it was used as a symbol to represent the growing shoot of the date palm, also regarded as the "tree of life", since it provided Babylonians with food, drink, clothing and shelter.
The symbol first appeared to decorate a 17th century Indian shawl from Kashmir used by men. The shawls arrived in Britain in the 18th century when the soldiers and administrators of the British East India Company brought them back.
The early shawls were imitations of the Kashmir shawls, but the shape of the shawl was altered in the 1820s: as the straight dress was abandoned in favour of wider shoulders, narrow waists and flaring skirts, the shawl was folded to a triangle and draped around the shoulders to highlight the tapered waist.
Around the same time there was a change also in the weaving processes: British manufacturers wove the shawls on a silk warp, but soon spinning improved allowing to produce an all-woollen shawl in one piece. In this way the pattern extended towards the central area becoming more intricate and complicated and turning into a naturalistic floral motif.
In the 1840s more women started wearing the rectangular plaids favoured by Queen Victoria instead of the square shawls. Paisley shawls were also popular among the working classes, and women who couldn't afford them opted for the Scotch Plaid until manufacturers started producing a printed version of the shawl on cheap fabric. The printed shawls were one of the reasons why the trend somehow started dying, the other reason is to be attributed to the arrival of the bustle: when ladies turned to mantles, capes and jackets for outdoor wear, the shawl went out of fashion also in small villages.
Original shawls were made using pashmina, but Paisley manufacturers had to settle on Australian worsted yarn that had to be dyed (Paisley also boasted a strong dyeing industry). Natural dyes prevailed at the beginning, while, from 1856, manufacturers turned to chemical aniline dyes.
The Paisley weavers were among the best paid workers in Britain when the trend for the Paisley motif boomed. Things changed as the years passed, though: one of the most important battle they fought in the 19th century revolved around the Sma' (small) Shot, the cotton thread that held the coloured wefts in place (the thread was not seen on the surface, and the manufacturers refused to pay for the yarn used). After many disputes the weavers won their fight and, in 1856, they established the first Saturday of July as Sma' Shot Day, a celebratory holiday to commemorate their triumph over the manufacturers.
The arrival of the powerlooms dealt a blow to the weavers as the intricate patterns of the Paisley shawls couldn't be woven on them. The fate of the weavers changed for good when shawls went out of fashion. The last Paisley shawls were woven in 1903 and the very last loomshop closed down in the early 1940s.
The motifs included in the Hermès' "Paisley from Paisley" collection were taken from the original 1830s pattern books now archived in the basement store of the museum and they were reinterpreted in different colour palettes going from darker shades to pastel ones.
Some samples from this capsule collection will also be donated to the town and will be displayed at the museum when it reopens in 2022. The museum closed last year ahead of the four-year refurbishment; its accessible museum store where the Paisley pattern material is kept is open to public tours, but the collection will return to Paisley museum once the refurbishment of the main building gets completed.
Before Hermès local independent designers such as Paisley Pins - a duo mainly producing small accessories inspired by the famous pattern and selling them online and in local shops such as the Scottish Design Exchange - created collections and pieces moving from the history of this textile.
Time will tell if the efforts of the French maisons, but also of local designers will contribute to the regeneration of Paisley or even to relaunching in a bigger and better way the Sma' Shot Day festival (that still takes place in July).
Surely, the best news linked to the Hermès collection weren't about the capsule per se, but about the fact that the museum intends to digitalise its archive and allow in this way more designers from all over the world to access it and be inspired by the history of the Paisley pattern.
The museum currently preserves the most comprehensive collection of Paisley patterned shawls in the world: it starts with Kashmir shawls and features designs from the 1800s to the 1860s, including zebra striped and kirking shawls. The most beautiful ones are the highly decorative shawls such as a French shawl from 1870 characterised by a spectacular asymmetric motif probably designed by Antony Berrus (1815-1883).
So, hopefully, this latest collaboration with Hermès will contribute to bring back the attention to traditional textiles and manufacturing heritage in Scotland, in the same way as Sarah Burton's A/W 19 collection for Alexander McQueen focused on the importance of craftsmanship and fabrics from the North of England.
Considering that Glasgow weaving college held an exhibition of Paisley shawls in 1902, and a bigger one was organised at the Paisley Museum in 1905, the time may has come to rediscover what's hiding in the archives of one of the most understated museums in Great Britain.
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