Observations on fashion

Look in the autumn collections now starting to appear in the shops and you will find wool. But not just any old wool: this is dyed, mixed and teased before being woven into tweed, a deeply functional, historic material that doesn't actually belong in shops at all.

Tweed is a workers' fabric, and the toffs have been stealing it for more than a century. You may cut and sew it into a pencil skirt or into tailored jackets; yet tweed will always look out of place away from the landscape of leaf and rock into which it was born. Tweed is stolen goods.

The reason tweed looks so "countrified", no matter how urban the silhouette it is forced into, is also the reason behind its success. Tweed is the original camouflage. It was woven that way so that the gamekeepers of large country estates would blend in with the landscape. This is why tweed sticks out like a sore thumb on the high street - or even on estates from where it did not originate. For example, the Kinnaird tweed, adapted for the Perthshire estate of that name, is blue and white. It allowed the Kinnaird keeper to melt into the granite hills that were his backdrop. A keeper from a greener estate would have stood out as keenly as George Bush at a Mensa meet-up.

So the estate workers wore tweed because it was inconspicuous, warm and, to an extent, water resistant (traditionally, the wool was oiled before weaving). Little by little the landed gentry realised that it was much more fun gallivanting around the countryside in cosy tweeds. Hitherto, "country" dress for them had been town dress with slight modifications - neither practical nor comfortable.

Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, was the real thief of tweed. He allowed visitors to the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk to stay in their shooting tweeds all day, changing into toff's gear only in the evening, whereas previously they had to change dress four times a day. Before long, tweed was accepted country dress and, at least to the untrained eye, master and servant started to look the same. Guests often didn't know who to tip.

Tweed is not the only example of sartorial theft perpetrated on the workers. The coachman's greatcoat, with its warming multi-layered shoulder capes, was nicked by the gentry in the 1790s. The frock coat, smocks, cord - all were once practical workwear, something the servants could call their own. Then, better made, in better fabrics, they were translated into mere fashion for their masters and mistresses.

Still, the workers got the last laugh. It was customary for a lady's maid to get her mistress's cast-offs. The resulting confusion was observed by Daniel Defoe in Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business: "The apparel of our women-servants should be next regulated, that we may know the mistress from the maid. I remember I was once put very much to the blush, being at a friend's house, and by him required to salute the ladies, I kissed the chamber-jade into the bargain, for she was as well dressed as the best."

Annalisa Barbieri is the New Statesman's fashion correspondent

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