Donegal Tweed

Donegal tweed is the speckled tweed: a handwoven Irish wool flecked with little knots of bright color, the signature neps that nineteenth century Donegal weavers spun in from leftover dyed wool. Against a heathered grey or brown ground, the flecks of red, blue, and gold read at close range as scattered confetti and at a distance as depth. Like Harris Tweed it grew from a cottage industry on poor land where weaving supplemented crofting, and it remains the tweed you recognize by its colored specks rather than its pattern.