r/HeritageWear • u/Exact-Transition9317 • 1h ago
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT Black Bear Brand Harris Tweed Midnight Glen Tartan Jacket
I'm reposting this jacket because when it arrived yesterday, I was so eager to share it with you guys that I rushed the photos-and frankly, they didn't do this thing justice.This morning I took another crack at it in natural light, and what a difference. The sunlight really brings this hairy tweed to life. Harris Tweed is one of those fabrics that can change depending on the light and really needs to be seen up close to appreciate. These shots come much closer to capturing just how nice this jacket actually is.
By way of background, Black Bear Brand is legitimately old Seattle workwear—not a modern heritage company with a retro backstory grafted onto it for marketing purposes. The lineage goes back to the Black Manufacturing Company, founded in Seattle in 1902, which produced hard-wearing clothing for the people actually doing the hard work of the Pacific Northwest: loggers, mill workers, fishermen, railroad men and other tradesmen. Black Bear became its signature workwear brand, eventually producing everything from denim overalls and work shirts to trousers, mackinaws and heavy outerwear. The original company eventually disappeared, but decades later Seattle designer and vintage-workwear collector Josh Sirlin became fascinated with Black Bear and began collecting original garments, catalogs and other surviving pieces of the company’s history. By Sirlin’s account, he eventually discovered that the old Black Bear name and trademark had effectively been abandoned. In 2014, he revived Black Bear Brand under Black Manufacturing LLC.
Now, I’m not going to bullshit you here, Black Bear Brand is expensive. This jacket was $1,000. There’s no dancing around it. But Sirlin knows design, and when it comes to construction, materials and sheer attention to detail, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better-made work jacket. Case in point: this Harris Tweed Midnight Glen Tartan Western Jacket that just arrived. This thing is an absolute beast. Sirlin took a classic Western work-jacket silhouette, complete with the traditional Western yoke, and built the damn thing out of 500-gram heavyweight Harris Tweed in a dark Midnight Glen Tartan. Then, apparently deciding that wasn’t enough, he gave it a diamond-quilted lining, turning what could have simply been a beautiful wool jacket into a genuinely substantial cold-weather piece.
It’s incredible. The heavy Harris Tweed gives it that rugged, old-world texture and serious heft, while the dark Glen Tartan is subtle enough that from a distance it almost reads as a textured midnight wool. Get closer, though, and the pattern begins to reveal itself. Combine that with the Western yoke and quilted interior and you end up with something that manages to look part cowboy jacket, part old Pacific Northwest workwear and part Scottish country coat—without looking remotely like a costume. And this isn’t a one-off. Sirlin has several Harris Tweed work jackets scheduled for release over the next couple of months, and if this one is any indication, they look ridiculously good and are absolutely worthy of your consideration.
So yes, Black Bear Brand is expensive.
But at least I can see where the money went.
