Since 1978

Three generations, one street, and a lot of the same customers.

The shop was opened by Donald MacLeod in 1978 to sell oilskins to fishermen. It sells rather fewer oilskins now and rather more walking boots, but it is the same room and two of the same fixtures.

We are not a brand and we do not want to be one. We stock about forty makers, we have used all of it, and we will tell you when the cheaper one is the better one, which happens more often than you would think.

How we choose what to stock

1

Somebody here has used it

In weather on this island. Not at a trade show, and not for an afternoon.

2

It can be repaired

If a thing cannot be mended when it fails, we would rather not sell it at all.

3

It lasts

We would rather sell you one jacket a decade than one a year. It is worse for turnover and better for everyone else.

4

Made somewhere we can name

Not always here. Always somewhere we can tell you, and by whom.

A highland cow looking straight down the lens

Where the name comes from

The machair is the strip of shell-sand grassland along the west coast of the Outer Hebrides. It is flat, it is beautiful for six weeks a year, and it is exposed to everything the Atlantic has.

It is also where most of this gets tested, usually by accident.