A small shop with
an argument to make
Bear Hollow Clothiers makes Highland wear one garment at a time — cloth from the Scottish mills, built by hand to one man's measurements, for a man who intends to own it for the next thirty years.
The history is Scotland's.
The revival has
a second home here.
Highland dress began in Scotland and is still very much alive there. Alongside it, a second home for the tradition has grown up in places like East Tennessee and the Carolinas — games fields and family gatherings full of men whose great-grandparents left, who want to reclaim a rich heritage on purpose rather than inherit it by proximity.
That audience has different requirements, and Bear Hollow takes them seriously. Cloth chosen for a Scottish October is a punishment in a Tennessee August. We select for the seasons our customers actually live in, without giving up the construction that makes a garment worth owning and the history that makes each piece special.
Honoring the heritage is the whole point. So we deliver handcrafted, tailor-fit items that call back to centuries of history and will last for 30 or more years into the future.
Read the JournalTony Davis,
start to finish
Tony started Bear Hollow wanting to know whether a kilt could still be made properly — cut on the older lines, from real cloth, fit to the man wearing it rather than a size chart. He put photographs of the results on social media. Commissions started arriving almost immediately, and they have not stopped since.
The years since have gone into the relationships that make it possible — the Scottish mills who weave the cloth, and the American tailors he partners with, who know how a garment ought to be put together and are willing to say so. Bear Hollow is built on those relationships. Tony designs every piece, sits in on every fitting, and stands behind everything that leaves the shop.
He intends to keep at it through retirement and well past it. The aim is not to keep Highland dress under glass. It is to hand it forward: the same construction and the same respect for where it came from, made in cloth suited to the men wearing it now, whatever country they live in.
Book a Call
Every commission starts
with a conversation
Not a form, not a size chart, and not a set of measurements taken alone with a tape and a guess. A video call, twenty minutes, walked through on camera. It is the reason these garments fit the first time, and it is the part of the process worth taking slowly.
Personal
Every commission runs through Tony directly, start to finish. There is no production line to feed.
White glove
You are spoken to directly, at every stage, by the man running your commission.
Excellence
Hand-finished where hand-finishing matters, and honest about where it does not.
Plain dealing
A firm quote before cloth is ordered. No charge until you have agreed to it.
On the bear
The maker's mark is a standing bear, and the paw print is sewn into every garment that leaves the shop. It is not a clan badge and it is not borrowed from anybody's heraldry. It reflects the East Tennessean environment where the work is done and the personality of the man who owns it.