Knitwear – a revival for high fashion’s poor relation
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Version 0 of 1. Within minutes of visiting the Fashion and Textile Museum’s new exhibition, Knitwear – Chanel to Westwood, I was seized by a powerful urge to dig out my knitting needles. I had forgotten that knitwear can do that to you. The exhibition, in Bermondsey, south London, focuses on highlights from a century of knitting in fashion and presents more than 150 pieces from the collection of Mark and Cleo Butterfield, on show to the public for the first time. Highlights include rare Chanel cardigan suits, 1930s swimwear, pieces by Missoni and Bill Gibb and more conceptual pieces by Comme des Garçons, Vivienne Westwood and Julien Macdonald. Giant wooden crates offer up a series of separate tableaux to the visitor with garments grouped according to style and in loose chronology. At the entrance, a knitted skirt is placed next to a woollen dress in the same pattern together with a waistcoat – one is from H&M, one hand-knitted in 1907 and the other at the time of the first world war. This startling and clever device puts you on notice to watch for how the past informs the future. Whether machine-produced for the general market or hand-knitted during wartime rationing, the garments on display give a sense of the emotional investment that went into their creation. That is something almost unique to knitwear, in my opinion. An individual garment knitted by your mum over many long winter evenings confers an awareness of the time and emotion that went into it. The mum-knitted cardi is a portable hug. It is also a way of recreating the inaccessible luxe of the big fashion houses in your own home. How many of us attempted Schiaparelli’s knitted trompe l’oeil bow or Chanel’s revolutionary jersey in our living rooms? So why, then, is knitting so often seen as the poor relation of high fashion? Dennis Nothdruft, the museum’s curator, believes the “basic functionality of knitwear” loses out against the glamour of couture. But with knitwear, especially if knitted yourself, every step and stitch in construction is known, seen and touched – the very same characteristics of haute couture, which makes it even harder to understand why knitwear suffers by comparison. Almost in response to this stereotype, the exhibition covers all facets of knitwear, from the current crop of innovative knitwear designers, such as Sibling and Mark Fast, to the 1943 war pamphlet Make Do and Mend. Both serve as a reminder that knitting used to be a widely practised skill in homes across the UK (hands up if your mum taught you), whereas now it is the province of highly trained individuals. I’m sure many of my generation remember sitting with hanks of unpicked wool around our hands while it was wound up into balls for knitting into something else. I don’t imagine that happens much now. The days when four-ply was stocked in every corner shop and you could have your chosen wool “put by” for collection are gone. Knitting wool is no longer the cheaper option. Although there is hope: the museum’s Kaffe Fassett exhibition last year was hugely popular and proves that interest in the craft is far from extinct. It is, after all, a route to great versatility in dressing – you wouldn’t roll a couture jacket up and pop it into your bag but you might a 1950s-style cocktail sweater. This unstuffy, creatively staged exhibition has a real buzz about it, not least because the Fashion and Textile Museum is a hidden gem among London’s exhibition spaces. It also has the best lemon drizzle cake I have ever eaten. I brought a slice home to have while I unravelled the pea-green sack I knitted a couple of years ago and attempted to turn it into something wonderful. As Nothdruft says of the exhibition: “I hope it inspires people to try.” In me, at least, it has. • Knitwear – Chanel to Westwood runs until 18 January at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London SE1 Follow The Invisible Woman on Twitter @TheVintageYear |