Hat's Off to Barbour's Beacon Heritage Collection

Barbour's New Collection Shows Innovation with a Key Historical Perspective

You wait a while for a Barbour feature and then two arrive in quick succession. But it would be remiss of The Tweed Pig not to mention Barbour's limited edition Beacon Heritage Collection.

The collection was created in collaboration with Japanese designer Tokihito Yoshida, who took his inspiration from the British countryside. Tokhito is renowned for his academic approach to design and thoroughness in construction. Here he has applied it to a collection that reveals a knowledge of Barbour's archive and colour palette.

It's good stuff. I just hope that with all the fashion talk around Barbour, they don't follow Burberry on to the catwalk and set adrift from their heritage. Yoshida, with his confessed Anglophilia, seems like a safe pair of hands. His almost obsessive attention to detail can be seen in the complexity of the The Spey Fishing Jacket (below), which is constructed using 240 pieces. But it's not complexity without reason - the jacket is built for purpose. 

You Can never Have Enough Pockets

Yoshida has said that he likes jackets that also serve as bags, so that you don't need to carry one. I know what he means. I sometimes wear my 3/4-length Barbour Border, with its important Made in England label, just because of the huge internal poacher's pockets. It's pictured at the top with my ancient wax hat. I re-applied wax to the hat myself and rather overdid it. But it keeps the rain out. The hat's kept in one of the poacher's pockets for sudden showers.  

Tweed Offerings

The Beacon Heritage Collection includes tweed coats for the great outdoors. There's no compromise on functionality. My favourite, the Oates (below), has a waterproof laminated Shetland wool tweed outer, which was inspired from a button-up tunic from Barbour's archive. It has leather buttons, is buggy-lined in ventile and has a zipped game pocket for all your hunting or rambling essentials - hip flask, Romney's delicious Kendal Mint Cake, cigars and so on.

Tweed Thought: With classic options like this available, why do people choose those insipid jackets in migraine-inducing colours you get in camping shops?