A Visit to Magee Mill
This is the last part of our report from the trip to Donegal, Ireland - a visit to the Magee weaving mill. Many fabrics from our FW2024 collection come from here; it’s the reason we traveled to Donegal. Today, we would like to take you on a journey through the history and the intricacies of fabric production. Ready?
Let’s start with a brief summary of the company: a family business, now in its fifth generation, with over 150 years of history. Impressive? Indeed!
Magee’s story began in 1866, when John Magee opened a drapers shop selling tweed handwoven by locals. The business quickly grew; soon after, the weaving mill was established, and the company passed into the hands of John’s relative, Robert Temple. Today, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, still under the same family name, manage the company. The current CEO is Patrick, whom we had the pleasure of meeting. All the best, Paddy!
Today, Magee is primarily a weaving mill, the largest in the region, renowned for producing Donegal Tweed - but not only that, as they also weave Irish linen and more “conventional” wool without the distinctive flecked texture.
Still, the company also remains active on other fronts and is deeply rooted in the local community. In the center of Donegal Town, at “The Diamond” (main square named for its shape), Magee has a store where you can buy not only fabrics and accessories but also ready-made garments (until recently, made here in Donegal Town); you can also pop by Magee’s for lunch in the charming restaurant above the store.
But today, we’re not talking about seafood (which, let me emphasize, is excellent here); today, we’ll discuss how fabrics are made - it’s going to get technical.
It all starts with yarn - since Magee is a weaving mill, not a spinning mill, the yarn comes from outside, supplied by various spinners.
When it comes to Donegal Tweed, the mill takes pride in using only custom-made yarns prepared by several local spinning mills according to their specifications - thanks to this, you won’t find identical fabric with the same mix of colors anywhere else.
In addition to Irish, Donegal-spun yarn, other materials from the EU and the UK are used to produce the fabrics: plain wool, alpaca, cashmere, cotton, silk, or linen. Sometimes they’re blended - like in the Gamefeather Tweed - and sometimes used on their own, because although we (and probably you) are mainly interested in Donegal Tweed here, the weaving mill’s range is much broader.
…but that’s an easy job at all: while for plain fabrics (or herringbone), this is just time-consuming, for patterned fabrics (such as checks or houndstooth), it also gets extremely complex.
Sometimes, 200 or even 300 cylinders are needed to create a pattern, arranging each thread in the correct order. Although machines assist, it’s mostly done by hand, requiring full concentration. This process can take up to two full days for even an experienced worker.
After the yarn is wound onto the beam, the main weaving process begins on automated looms.
Once again, order is essential - the pre-prepared warp is interwoven with the weft (actually, several wefts can be used, in different colors) in the correct manner, according to the chosen weave type and desired pattern.
The loom operates much like an archaic computer - using special punched cards as a “program” that dictates the order in which warp threads are raised and lowered to allow the weft to pass through. Watching this process is fascinating - you can’t help but linger a bit longer to watch!
This is what the handlooms look like - still used to produce some fabrics today, manually operated by artisans’ hands (and feet). Note the narrower width - due to the challenge of handling them, the fabrics produced on these are half-width, measuring 77 to 80 cm instead of the standard 150 cm.
Such equipment used to be found in nearly every household in Donegal -during the off-season in winter, weaving mills outsourced production to local cottage weavers; that’s how the local economy was organized. In summer, people lived off fishing and farming, and in winter, they wove. Today, as we mentioned, this craft is disappearing, and even relatively good pay (many customers are willing to pay extra for a “hand-woven” label) doesn’t attract newcomers. Young people leave the province or choose other professions; there’s a generational shift.
Interestingly, unlike selvedge denim, which is made on similar shuttle looms (we wrote about this in an article on jeans), tweed woven in this way doesn’t differ significantly from its modern “wide loom” counterpart - whereas denim benefits from the technical ability to apply more tension to the fibers without damaging them, tweed must always be woven relatively loosely anyways. Today, the only advantage of hand production is the prestige it brings, and perhaps greater flexibility for small batch production. Still, Magee’s output includes such tweeds, mainly as a unique addition to the range and as a nod to the region’s history.
Most of the production takes place on the looms shown above - less romantic but more pragmatic; this production method is much faster and more consistent.
Even so, the human factor remains crucial - constant monitoring is needed; a thread break means downtime and manual tying and rethreading.
And well, that’s a wrap - both on our visit to Magee and our Ireland series as this is the third and final part. Our social media also features a video where you can see the looms in action, be sure to watch it!
If you haven’t read the previous posts, you can check them out here:
- Greetings from Donegal, Ireland
Goodbye for now - I hope this journey was intriguing.
For the last time: greetings from Donegal!
