'We have a wall of fame from Billie Eilish to Shania Twain': Why celebs across the world love Moon’s tweeds and wool cloth

Prized by celebrities and designers the world over, Yorkshire weavers Abraham Moon & Sons is playing a vital role in making British tailoring cool again, as Yorkshire Post Fashion Editor Stephanie Smith discovers.

Billie Eilish is pinned on the Wall of Fame at the Abraham Moon & Sons mill offices in Guiseley, alongside Justin Bieber, Liam Gallagher, Jodie Comer, Gordon Ramsay, Kate Middleton, Richard E Grant, Shania Twain, King Charles III, and many other famous wearers of Moon's tweed and wool cloth.

“We have quite a fun game at the mill where people report back on who they've seen on TV,” says Moon's brand and product director Joe McCann.

When Eilish wore a baseball cap made from a Moons navy Shetland wool at last year’s Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, staff at the 189-year-old Yorkshire weavers were surprised and delighted.

“One that was really nice to see recently was in the latest Amandaland season - Joanna Lumley was wearing a beautiful jacket made by Jaeger from our fabric. It was black and white check,” Joe says.

TV shows such as Bridgerton, Peaky Blinders and The Gentlemen have raised the profile of tweed and wool tailoring. “And then, of course, you've got The Traitors, which has done a really good job of putting a spotlight on traditional British fabrics again,” he says.

“British tailoring doesn't really ever go out of style. There's just something about the sensibilities, the practicalities, that means you can live with it over time.

“Also, as people seem to be getting more interested in the racing season, the big events, they put a light on that kind of traditional British look. We see this being adopted in other markets, particularly markets like Spain and Italy, where they also really do like that traditional British look.”

Founded in 1837, Abraham Moon & Sons is one of the last remaining fully functional "vertical" woollen mills in the UK, managing every stage of production under one roof, from fleece to dyeing, spinning, and weaving the finished cloth.

The firm employs more than 200 people and has been in the hands of just two families – the Moons and now the Walshes. It exports to more than 50 countries worldwide, including the US, Japan, South Korea, China, Italy, France and Australia, creating cloth for top fashion and interior designers in the UK and across the globe, including: Barbour; Boden; Christian Dior; Hobbs; Hugo Boss; J Crew; Jaeger; Saint Laurent; the National Portrait Gallery, and The British Museum.

Moons also supplies many tailors, from Savile Row to local businesses. “There is still a desire for people to want to purchase better,” Joe says. “There's nothing like having something made for you.

“The high end doesn't get affected in the same way as the mid markets do. So while I would say there are not as many people wearing tailoring as there once was, I'm seeing more tailors adopting different blocks and different styles, and womenswear is an interesting sector because as tastes change, maybe people don't want something quite as fitted or as formal, but still want that quality of a bespoke product.”

Women in Tailoring, a group supporting women working in the industry - from cutters, tailors and cloth merchants, to sales, administration and accounting - visited Moons in May to give members an understanding of the heritage and processes involved in the production of woollen cloths and tweeds.

"In the last 20 years, the number of women working within the trade has increased exponentially, with the number of male to female apprentices reaching a nearly 50/50 split in the last decade,” says Lindsay Taylor, Chair of Women in Tailoring UK.

Joe says: “The finishing process makes such a huge difference. It's not really until you get to feel a bit of cloth in what we would refer to as greasy form, so it hasn't yet been washed or scoured. And then after, you're like, ‘oh, wow’. It really does transform. We are a tactile industry.

“We carry and we produce a large variety of fabrics. We're best known for tweed, of course, but we produce suiting type fabrics, we produce fancy fabrics.”

Dairine Nethercott, Moon’s head of Design, says tailoring is less male-dominated than it once was, noting that Moons works with Holland Cooper, the British brand founded in 2008 by Jade Holland Cooper, whose signature double-breasted coats, capes and wool blazers have redefined traditional British countrywear and tailoring.

“She's very good at promoting the whole kind of lifestyle aspect to it - it makes it more relatable,” says Dairine, who manages the design team of seven. “Whether it's fabric by the metre or a scarf or a throw, it's all designed by the Moon Design team,” she says.

“We've got a fantastic archive and we sell a lot of very traditional tweed jacketings - there's kind of quite a strong trend and interest in a very British look, country tweeds, but they're not necessarily used for a country customer; they can be used for a more fashion-conscious city customer.

“We've also seen a lot of interest in what would have been heavy heritage fabrics, things like an army coat.

“And again, they've been reinterpreted not with a historical look and not with a nod to history, but with more of a contemporary look,” she says, adding that Moons works with funky men's outerwear brand CP Company.

“There's an interest in wool and hopefully it's ‘buy less but buy better’. I also think the ‘Made in the UK’ bit is really important,” she says, adding that linen and lighter fabrics are a growing part of the Moons business.

Victoria Thompson, owner of Norton & Townsend tailors, based in Ilkley, is set to open within the Moon’s shop in York, so that cistomers will be able to go there for all their tailoring needs.

Amy Long, Moon's Apparel Design lead, says: “We've just launched autumn’winter ‘27. It's a lot of our heritage checks and tweeds, but giving them a modern spin and injecting seasonal colours, to make things feel fresher and newer, and relevant to the market today.

“Browns and greens are still very strong, particularly the browns. Navy and grey have taken a back step and it's very much all about the browns and the neutrals.

“On the tweed menswear side, the heritage fashion trend has been so massive that everyone's looking to us, because we are one of the big suppliers of it, and thinking ‘what can we do with it, how can we bring that into our brand’?

“Some of our bigger customers will view the winter collection, and they'll pick designs they like and might ask us to tweak them, and select their own colour palettes or change scales, or they might come to us with their own archive or an inspiration image and say, ‘can you create something like this in your fabrics?’ So we do work really closely with some of our customers and have good working relationships with them.”

Joe says: “We're putting an awful lot of energy into re-establishing British wool, certainly more from an international and UK perspective, but also just exploring what types of wools are out there and getting to know our base ingredient far more.

“We reintroduced British lambswool into our accessories collection three years ago and off the back of that we've introduced it into the fashion fabrics, and eventually we will be doing interior fabrics as well, but we've seen really good uptake, really good growth, and that is really pleasing.

“We work closely with the British Wool Marketing Board in Bradford. It's very positive to see customers saying, ‘I do want to use British wool, from a British mill as well.’”

moons.co.uk